Case Studies
BreastCancer.org
BreastCancer.org increases commitment to helping those impacted by breast cancer with new "Rate Your Resource" feature for website visitors.
The Company
BreastCancer.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the most reliable, complete and up-to-date information about breast cancer. Its mission is to help women and their loved ones understand the complex medical and personal information about breast cancer, so they can make the best decisions for their lives. In pursuit of this mission, the organization relentlessly seeks opportunities to improve the quality and content of its website, www.BreastCancer.org.
Challenge
BreastCancer.org was interested in adding a significant new feature to its existing website called "Rate Your Resource". The new feature would allow users to write and submit reviews about helpful breast cancer resources such as books, websites and videos. Visitors to BreastCancer.org would be able to search these resources, read reviews and learn how to obtain more information or make purchases.
BreastCancer.org also wanted to track which of its website users were submitting resources and writing reviews. This required the new feature to integrate seamlessly with BreastCancer.org's existing user database. Finally, BreastCancer.org administrators needed the ability to approve resources submitted by users and maintain the additional information related to the resource.
To implement the new feature, BreastCancer.org turned to Chariot Solutions, a Pennsylvania-based consulting firm specializing in the design, development and implementation of software solutions using Java technology. Chariot agreed to manage all aspects of the enhancement and deliver a solution that fit within the budgetary guidelines outlined by BreastCancer.org.
The Design
BreastCancer.org is a nonprofit organization with limited financial resources. Therefore, Chariot's experienced Java architects looked to leverage popular open source software in the design of the new website feature. This minimized licensing expenses while providing a solution that was based upon widely accepted and documented design standards. In addition, the specific technologies chosen were all very popular, with strong on-line user communities and published documentation. This would give BreastCancer.org flexibility with respect to maintaining and updating the site.
Jetty, the popular open source servlet container, was chosen to deliver the dynamic web pages to the web site visitors. Jetty requires very little in the way of computing resources, providing adequate scalability for the anticipated website traffic. To validate website user credentials, a new custom authentication module was created to integrate with the MySql relational database. To manage communication between the application and the persistent data store, the open source object relational mapping framework Hibernate was selected. Hibernate boasts outstanding performance, a sophisticated query facility and features that make it easy to use. To further reduce development time and cost, Xdoclet was used to manage the various configuration files and to synchronize the database schema with changes in the application code.
The web pages were built with the Apache Struts framework, which provides a Model-View-Controller framework that simplifies many of the common tasks associated with web development including form submission, validation and page flow. The Tiles framework was used in conjunction with Struts to provide unified control of the web page layouts, further easing maintenance of website content.
To enhance the process of submitting book resources, a web service from Amazon.com was integrated into the application. The website user could add a book easily by entering a its' ISBN. The web services integration automatically retrieves the name, author and description of the book directly from Amazon.com.
The Result
The Chariot Solutions development team was able to deliver the new "Rate Your Resource" website feature within BreastCancer.org's time frame and budget. This new feature gives visitors to BreastCancer.org even greater access to resources and increases the feeling of community the organization is trying to achieve on the website. Remarkably, this powerful new feature was delivered cost-effectively via the prudent use of readily available open-source Java technologies. The experience and creativity of the Chariot architects also paid dividends with the incorporation of the Amazon.com web services access to their extensive library. This integration makes it easy for users to add book resources and is an example of how new technology can be leveraged to improve usability.
