SBSI Architectural Standards

Core Elements of a Complete and Effective Solution

There is nothing inherently complex about each component of a World-class web portal when each of the elements is viewed in isolation, but satisfying them simultaneously in a rapid and cost-effective manner requires a relatively sophisticated and mature solution.  Experience in a wide variety of complex web-based IT systems has demonstrated that there is a consistent, finite set of “core design elements” that must always be included in an “appropriate” solution in order to ensure that it provides the level of quality that today’s Users expect.  As such, SBSI has included the following core elements as an important component of our design process and have carefully considered them – individually and in whole – as the proposal has been constructed to present the proposed technical solutions.

High Capacity and Performance – Proposed solutions must have the computational and memory capacity to support large numbers of Users, to contain and distribute large amounts information to those Users, and to accept and process large quantities of computational and storage request from those Users – and have the capability to meet all of these requirements simultaneously.  All elements of the solution – including hardware, software, database, and communications – must have the capability to support large numbers of simultaneous accesses, requests, and commands without noticeable performance degradation (i.e., no single-point bottlenecks).

Efficient Content Maintenance Mechanisms – Proposed solutions must provide the Customer (or his maintenance agents) with efficient mechanisms for the constant update and refreshment of content and information.   Such mechanisms must support content maintenance activities for the bulk of the Customers content (including text and images), be very user-friendly, and require a minimum of expertise and training.  The mechanism must be accessible via any standard Internet connection and should not require the installation of non-standard “plug-ins” or software at the Client platform (i.e., browser).

Effective and Efficient User Management Mechanisms – Proposed solutions must provide the Customer (or his maintenance agents) with effective and efficient mechanisms for the entry, update, and management of User information (including but not limited to Contact and Authentication data).   As with Content Maintenance mechanism, User Management mechanisms must be very user-friendly, require a minimum of expertise and training, be accessible via any standard Internet connection, and should not require the installation of non-standard “plug-ins” or software at the Client platform (i.e., browser).

Robust/Highly Available Services – Proposed solutions must be defined in such a way as to ensure that the system is highly resistant to failure.  When failures do occur, the design should ensure that services (or performance) will degrade in a graceful and predictable manner.   In all cases, the design must ensure that no action of any kind on the part of a User can cause – or lead to – failure, shut down, or restart of the web server or any of its associated components or services.

Easily Maintainable Code – Proposed solutions must be designed and developed in such a way as to promote ease of code maintenance.  While an exposition of our coding standards are clearly beyond the scope of this proposal, satisfaction of this element generally implies that – as a minimum - code must be developed in accordance with Best Commercial Practices.  Some prominent examples would include standardized use of comments, common code and data structures, use of object-oriented code (wherever appropriate) and re-useable function libraries, standard naming conventions, etc.

Expandable and Extensible Design – Proposed solutions must be designed to allow significant expansion (i.e., increase in capacity) and extension (i.e., additional capability or functionality) without undue difficulty or expense.  Ultimately, the degree to which this element can be accomplished is driven by the selected coding paradigm and associated data structures.

Broad Usability – Proposed solutions must be defined in such a way as to ensure that a widely diverse spectrum of Users can easily and correctly utilize all aspects of the system.  This is a very broad subject and must be carefully considered in nearly all elements of the design – from definition of the overall information architecture, to the layout of pages, to selection of navigational paradigms, to design of administrative mechanisms.

Economical Design – Proposed solutions must be specifically designed to allow – and enforce – economy of development, implementation, and maintenance.  History has clearly demonstrated that economy is not a natural and inevitable result of good design, any more than quality is (although ultimately economy is significantly impacted by the achieved level of quality).  Rather, each design decision must be carefully assessed to determine its impact on Total Cost of Ownership.