DIP-SNAP
DIP-SNAP (DIstributed Portsmouth Social Networking APplication) is a social networking site with the aim to provide a simple way for people to communicate with each other and make new friends. The DIP-SNAP owners wanted the system to consist of two main components, a client and a server. The client is a web application will provide users with a web interface to the social networking site which users will be able to access via their web browsers. The server is the backbone of the system and stores the user profiles and passes information between users. Multiple servers were used which will allow the system to cope with heavy processing load and crashes on individual servers.
The system was written using Java and RMI so that each server could be run on any platform. The Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) system allows an object running in one Java virtual machine to invoke methods on an object running in another Java virtual machine. RMI provides for remote communication between programs written in the Java programming language.Each server communicated with each, keeping different MySQL servers up to date with each other. The system used a system of locks to mean that the data wasn’t overwritten. New servers could be added, easily, with new servers automatically getting a copy of the database installed.
