system design and implementation assignment

This group project is designed to introduce you and the members of your group to a practical application of the concepts of Systems Acquisition, Development, and Implementation. Each group will be design a middleware application, develop relevant documentation, acquire the necessary software components, and implement a working solution to demonstrate an understanding of the topics covered in the course. Written and oral communication skills are paramount in systems development work, and to that end, your group will use standard written documentation to present your findings, and will also be required to make one oral presentations to the class.

Abstract

Your company needs a data processing portal that will receive, on-demand, an Apache web server log file and analyze that file for relevant data points. These points provide information such as bytes transferred and HTTP status codes.

General Information

As specified in the syllabus, this project represents 18% (or 180 points) of your overall course grade (see revision to syllabus grading schema), so successful completion of this project is crucial to success in this class. Your grade will consist of:

· Your group’s submitted written documentation

· Your group’s presentation to the class

· Your contribution to the group, as demonstrated by:

· Your participation in the presentation

· Written documentation submitted by you (each student will be responsible for a portion of the written documentation)

· Evaluation by your peers to be done at the completion of the project.

Description

Our company operates a basic web presence consisting of mostly static web pages and images. Our company is asking you (IT Services) to build a data analytics program that will receive an input file on a semi-regular basis, parse and summarize the file contents, and make the file available for later download. The input file format is based on the Apache web server log file format. A sample of the file -- 20190101.log -- containing a single day's worth of data is attached.

The program will be ultimately hosted as a web page on a company server. During the design, development, and testing process, it is the responsibility of IT Service to provide a temporary web server for hosting. The IP address of the server and a URL to the program will be provided to our Operations team for testing and validation.

The program must be available, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Your team has complete freedom in the design of the final solution, including the operating system, programming language, app container, etc.

Analytics

The file should be parsed and summarized using the following metrics:

· Total number of records

· Number of rows containing "bad" data

· Number of responses returned for each status code (e.g. 200, 404, etc.)

· Total number of bytes transferred (all responses)

· Total number of responses (row counts, not bytes) for each client location (remote vs local).

Output file

The output file containing the results of the analytics should be formats as follows:

Rows: (Total number of rows - integer)

Bad: (Number of rows containing bad data - integer] Bytes: (Total number of bytes transferred)

Remote: (Byte count) Local: (Byte count)

(Status code 1): (Row count) (Status code 2): (Row count) (Status code 3): (Row count)

The output file must be plain text with no formatting, HTML, or text decorations. A sample output file -- 20190101.out -- to match the sample input file will be provided (so will the input file).

· Non-participation or other detrimental situations may reduce this grade on an individual basis.

There are several important dates that must be met during the course of this project. They are detailed in the table below:

You will need two different roles: group leader and group scribe.

· The group leader shall assign roles other than the scribe. The group leader shall ensure that all work performed meets documentation standards as set forth by the professor and that all work is correct. The group leader shall ensure that all work is completed by the deadlines. The group leader shall be responsible for collecting and submitting all work.

· The Quality Assurance person shall ensure that all forms are filled in properly and documentation is correct.

Project documentation shall consist of multiple Word documents based on the Adobe pdf Template provided. Draft versions of some of these will be provided at the mid-point. Many of the documents cannot be provided at inception because we have not covered that material yet.

Here are the various Project Deliverables required:

· Scope - Define the scope of this project based on this document, in-class discussion, conversations with the project sponsor, and assumptions. Focus on answering the questions What are we doing? and What are we not doing?

· Feasibility - Consider your project team, skills, and resources to establish the feasibility of delivering this project on-time and with quality.

· Project Sizing & Cost - Provide a high-level analysis of the project sizing and costs based on the known scope.

· Proposed schedule - Create a project schedule based on the major milestones that must be completed for this project to be successful. You will need to provide a Work Breakdown Structure and a Gantt chart / Network Diagram to depict the critical path.

· Buy versus build recommendation - Provide a recommendation on what IT systems components will be procured from third-party entities and which components will be constructed in-house.

· Hardware and software procurement strategy - Describe your strategy for procuring the necessary hardware and software components.

· Custom software strategy - Describe your strategy for creating and maintaining any custom software components required by this project.

· Configuration management - Document any configuration management tools or practices implemented in support of this project.

· Version control - Document the version control procedures for custom elements of this software product.

· Verification plan - Describe your strategy for verifying and validating the final product.

· Test scripts - Include all test scripts executed in support of this project.

· Risk assessment - Complete a risk assessment on the major threats to the system. Include a prioritized mitigation plan.

· Disaster recovery plan - Document the system recovery procedures in the event of a major disaster.

· Operations manual - Document basic procedures for operating, administering and troubleshooting the software.

· Quality Assurance Execution records - Documentation on what tests were executed, when they were executed, who executed them, and what were the results.

Delivery of Project Documentation

The project group leader shall deliver all documentation via a zip file uploaded to a dropbox provided to the class. There shall be one dropbox for the mid-project benchmark and one for the final benchmark. A grade will only be issued to the dropbox for the final benchmark. Group leaders are to clearly indicate in their zip file’s file name which group the zip file belongs to.

Do NOT submit all of your answers for either phase (Mid-Point or Final Submission) in one long Word document (I’m writing this because it has been done before). Rather, your group must submit one Word document for each deliverable above . Consequently, it will be advisable for you to submit all of the documents for each phase in one zip file.

Given the need to have a coherent, consistent, and unified approach to your documentation/deliverables, it makes the most sense for one person to be assigned to each document listed above. You don’t have to follow that method, but it is a historical fact that groups that do that create a more consistent product of a higher quality than those that do not.

As seen in the grading schema, this project consists of a group and an individual grade. In order for me to issue individual grades (which are calculated into your group’s grade), it is absolutely imperative that each deliverable be marked with the name of the student who completed it. In addition, it is requested that no more than one student be credited with completing any given deliverable. Otherwise, it becomes difficult for me to determine how much credit to give two or more students credited with completing any given deliverable.

Your scribe will be required to take notes of each meeting of the group. These notes must be included with your Project Documentation, at both the mid-point and final submission of the documentation.

Use of MS Project or Project Libre

In order to complete this project, you will need a copy of MS Project . Only one student in your group needs the software. You should be able to obtain a student version of MS Project from the MS Dreaamspark site. Otherwise, you may use Project Libre , which will be demonstrated in

class. Your project Gantt/Network Diagrams and Critical Path must be in this format. The .exe for Project Libre will be provided to you in a shared Google Drive file.

You will need to create a Gantt chart with each task. Each one of your documents provided, listed above, consists of a task, but you may enter other tasks into your chart as well. If necessary, you may group tasks as milestones.

Some documentation may require the use of MS Visio. This is not required. However, if at least one person in your group possesses this, that will help.

Your group shall make one presentations. See the timeline table above for presentation dates. The presentation shall be made at the end of the course, after your group project has been graded and returned to you.

Mid-Project Benchmark

The work turned in at the mid-project benchmark will be reviewed by me, but not graded.

· After your work has been reviewed, I will send your group comments regarding corrections that need to be made.

· The person who was responsible for the work needing correction will make the corrections. No one else shall do so .

· Corrections to those tasks requiring correction shall be resubmitted by a deadline set by me. Corrections will not be accepted after that deadline.

· Tasks that are clearly indicated as not requiring correction are not to be resubmitted. In other words, don’t just send your entire original submission again.

· In other words, if your original work wasn’t up to standards and it’s not corrected, or changes are not submitted before the correction deadline, my evaluation of your original work is what will be assigned a grade at the end of the project.

· Work submitted at the mid-project is NOT to be resubmitted at the final project deadline.

Your work will be graded for completeness and correctness. Responses submitted at the Mid- Point will be graded and factored into the final project grade, but the project grade will not be posted online after the Mid-Point. You will be informed of your project grade-to-date after Phase I, but final project grades will be posted after the completion of the entire project.

Each member will receive an individual and group grade. Generally speaking, the sum of the individual grades will add up to the group grade. In addition, each member of your group will fill out a peer evaluation form at the end of the project. You will be evaluating the participation of the other members of your group. It is absolutely imperative that EACH student evaluate each other student in their project group. Students who fail to turn in a group evaluation will receive a percentage deduction on their evaluation by their teammates.

Required Documentation at Mid-Point; at Final

Scope through Hardware and Software Procurement Strategy are required by the Mid- Point.

All other documentation listed, and the working site and data analytics files are due at the end of the project.

Software Required or Recommended

You will need to use:

· MS Project (latest version is preferable), or Project Libre.

· MS Visio (latest version is preferable), this software is optional

· MS Excel

· MS Word – please note that it might actually be easier for you to create your DFDs in MS Word using the flowcharting template. It might be easier to create the ER diagrams in Visio. You might want to try both before you make your final decision as to which is easier to use.

· MS PowerPoint for your presentation

· SSH Secure Shell (or Filezilla) to access web-students.armstrong.edu

· Access to SQL to run the data analytics

A Reminder About Plagiarism

Please remember the clause in the syllabus about plagiarism. Any work found to have been copied from material found online will be given a zero, with no opportunity given to resubmit the material. This goes for material submitted either at the mid-project benchmark or at the final submission. Since this is a group project, any such work will not only result in an individual grade of zero for the person who did the work, but the group will receive a zero for the portion of the project for which such work was submitted.