Okay, so I feel like it’s unfair of me to expect you guys to incorporate Neo4j into your project databases by the end of the semester, considering we’ve missed so much class and I haven’t even taught you guys how to query in it yet, lol. So here’s what we’re going to do for “assignment #9“:
Assignment #9 will be your final presentation (on demo day, a.k.a. the final exam period, a.k.a. May 1st). As I’ll explain more fully in class, you’re going to have two minutes to coherently and compellingly demonstrate your website’s functionality, in all its glory, followed by Three Minutes of Chaos® during which everyone in the class will be accessing your website all at once and adding (clean, tasteful) data to it.
Here’s what I’ll be looking for:
- That your two-minute explanation is cogent, understandable, and non-rambly. You should think through, plan, and practice this presentation. Yes it’s only two minutes, but you’ll be surprised how difficult it is to explain your website to a newcomer off-the-cuff. In particular, I’m going to be looking for things that are not obvious to a user how they would work, but which you seem to think are obvious and therefore never thought of articulating them. Such cases will result in points taken off. I suggest you give your presentation to a friend or two who has never seen your website, and ask them “what questions remain unanswered? After my explanation, what are you still unsure about?” You’ll find that some things you never even thought of mentioning are actually confusing to a newcomer, and will force them to guess (often wrongly) how your site is supposed to work.
- That your website contains information from MariaDB, Redis, and MongoDB; that you clearly explain which information is stored in which database; and that you use the session in some way to give different users different meaningful experiences. If you didn’t do some of these items earlier in the semester, and thus got less than full XP for some stages, now is your time to remedy these!
- That your website doesn’t break. If on the off-chance that a timing glitch causes your system a problem, I will verify with you later whether it’s a “real” (i.e., reproducible) bug. But this won’t happen in most cases. It would be a good idea to battle test your website over the next week and a half — ideally by having your friends and family bang on it, ideally at the same time — to verify it’s ready for action! You should not run it once, see that it works, and assume that it will work under all circumstances.
- Finally, that you are present, paying attention, and not rude during your classmates’ presentations. And also that you do not in any circumstances add data to their (or your) database that involves pornography, profanity, gender-insensitive material, racial/ethnic slurs, etc. Err on the side of caution here.
Send questions!
