I'm glad to announce a new project's on which Comtaste is working on : YuBuk. Flex with cross scripting techniques, Google MAPS, AJAX with Scriptacolous and Prototype libraries are some of the technologies involved in this project.
It was very fun to see how a simple web based old style application in some months turned into a real rich internet application.
We have published a Case Study on our site, where you can have more details.
Yubuk is a platform which is
accessible on the internet and on mobile terminals for all those who
love Italy for its enchanting locations, for its excellent cuisine and
exceptional hotels.
Yubuk.com contains information on ten of the
“coolest” locations in Italy, information which is accessible to all
and to which all the users can contribute and create, modify or comment.
This is one of the best and most useful mash up Rich Internet Application we've worked on. In fact to be able to conceive new and richer modes of fruition, the technological choice has also required a careful analysis of the languages and the standards of highest profile.
Starting from the initial prerequisites, at Comtaste we have analyzed the following list of technologies was opted for which together has contributed to create a true and real mash-up application:
- AJAX with Scriptacolous and Prototype libraries
- Flex with cross scripting techniques
- Google MAPS
- PHP
- Zend Framework
- MySql
It was chosen to use Google Maps to visualize, through the use of its API, the restaurants, hotels and all the locations present in the data bank of Ybuk.com. Furthermore, Ajax and Javascript functions were adopted to reduce the minimum traffic of data and download only the data relative to the portion of map visualized by the user. Through the use of the combination of Flex and Javascript technologies additional filters were made available to the user to optimize the searches on the map.
The increase of the visits to the site has brought (and will continue to bring more) an increase of traffic and load on the infrastructure web server. To avoid problems of instability or delays on the site, it was decided to separate the principle applications of the site on two different servers, Apache and PHP 5 was installed on the first, and instead MySOL is present on the second. Both applications were configured in order to obtain the best performance in relation to the load.
To improve the entire infrastructure of the site, a course or restructuring of the code was undertaken to exploit the potential offered by a powerful and famous PHP framework such as Zend. Security, reliability, modulation and integration are just some of the benefits that such a choice entails. The Zend Framework uses the latest development technology to be able to produce flexible and extendible code, using the standard design pattern for the web applications, the model-view-controller (MVC). Furthermore, in the framework, there are also functions present among which internationalization and localization, authentication, session management, search, cache and integration with external APIs.
The activities on Yubuk are up and running, with a continuous assistance for the improvement and evolution of the service. Important goals have already been achieved, measurable especially in terms of the improvement of the user experience and the ranking of the portal.
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