Project 1: Initial Ideas

CS290F Fall 2006 - UCSB Computer Science - Thorsten von Eicken

1. Describe the web site you will build and outline its functionality in 3-4 sentences.

We will be developing a music store that enables a user to search by artist, song, or album. Customers will be able to select individual songs and create a custom playlist with the option of purchasing it on a CD. They will also be able to share their playlists with other users and we hope to be able to link in with Rhapsody in order to stream music samples.

2. Where will you obtain the data to populate your web site, i.e., which web service will you use and what data will you collect there?

Rhapsody: http://webservices.rhapsody.com

3. Which data can users modify on your site?

Plan

1. Users will be able to add ratings for playlists or songs
2. Create custom playlists
3. Share playlists among users

More Ambitious Goals

1. Display album artwork (if available)
2. Have embedded music or URLs to other web services so that users can listen to their playlists.

4. What state will your server need to keep for a user as he/she moves from one page to the next? (e.g. items in shopping cart)

1. Items in shopping cart
2. Playlist information
3. Login state

5. Which database system will you be using? MySQL or PostgreSQL?

We will be using MySQL.

Do you have a reason for your preference?

We both have a considerable amount of experience with MySQL and there are many convenient interfaces such as PHPMyadmin.

6. On which platform will you develop? (Mac, Windows, Linux, ...)

• Developing on Mac and Linux.

• Hosting on Linux (CSIL) or on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.