This post briefly defines the technologies that White Wall Web uses to deliver the Construction Phases of the Web Application Development Projects that we manage.

This is not to say that we can not or will not use other technologies as the principles used when developing code are what really matters (understanding of frameworks, syntax and all the important drivers for project success and the appropriateness the components that make up web based systems to a particular need).

This is an introductory article, so please view it as such…
Basics

Web Applications need to run on hardware. The hardware is called a “Server” (don’t confuse with “Web Server” below) and is housed in a Data Center at an ISP. We use RSAWeb predominantly because they are a sister company who we trust and their SA servers are down the passage from us (they also have servers in the US), so we can solve problems very quickly with them.

On the Server an “Operating System” is installed.

On top of the operating system a “Web Server” is installed (this can be a bit confusing, but the “Web Server” refers to the software running on the operating system and not the hardware).

Along with the web server, various code “Libraries” are added which may be required for the web application to run.

Every Web Application is built using code and a database.

The code can be arranged in “Frameworks” which define the structure that the code must be arranged in (like conventions for saving files etc.)

Operating Systems

The majority of the world’s servers run on one of two operating systems: either LINUX (open source) or Windows (proprietary).

LINUX servers are generally considered to be much better for various reasons and over 60% of the world’s website servers run on LINUX (they are generally more stable, use less processing power than windows and are less prone to virus attacks).

LINUX operating systems go under various names including: UNIX, LINUX, Red Hat, FreeBSD, SUSE etc. etc.

Windows server operating systems include Windows Server and Windows NT.

Web Servers

On top of operating systems run “web servers” (software programmes that “serve” web applications by enabling that they are accessible via http://)

On LINUX we use either “Apache” (for PHP) or “Lighttd” (“Lighty” for Ruby on Rails).

On Windows we use Windows IIS for ASP.NET

Code

White Wall Web uses three dominant coding languages, namely: PHP; VB and Ruby.

Until recently we favored PHP for Web Applications for various reasons, but we now favor Ruby in most instances (due to its awesome framework).

All code we use enables the use of “Objects” and thus Object Orientated Programming.

Databases

White Wall Web uses three dominant databases: Microsoft SQL; PostGreSQL and MySQL

These databases are all extremely powerful and have various strengths and weaknesses. In most cases we now favor PostGreSQL.

Frameworks

The two strict/prominent frameworks that we use are “Ruby on Rails” and Microsoft’s “.NET Framework” (for ASP.NET)

For PHP we use CakePHP and our own “Muffin” framework built especially for RE/MAX enabling three servers to share the load of running the web application.

The frameworks that we use are powerful because the separate the Model (data) from the View (what the user sees) from the Controller (logic and business rules of the application). This is referred to as “model-view-controller” or “MVC”.