Today I started working on an application to demonstrate ”Cloud Scale” concepts. I had planned to do this using the PetShop application; unfortunately, the 1995 era PetShop Rails migration would take more repair work then a complete rewrite (HTML tables, no CSS, bad forms, no migrations, poor session architecture).
If I’m considering a fresh start, I’d rather do it with one of my non-PetShop pet projects called “WhatTheBus.” The concept combines inbound live data feeds and geo mapping with a hyper-scale use target. The use case is to allow parents to see when their kids’ bus is running late using the phone from the bus stop.
I’m putting the code in git://github.com/ravolt/WhatTheBus.git and tracking my updates on this bog.
My first sprint is to build the shell for this application. That includes:
- the shell RAILS application
- Cucumber for testing
- MemCacheD
- Simple test that sets the location of a bus (using a GET, sorry) in the cache and checks that it can retrieve that update.
This sprint does not include a map or any database. I’ll post more as we build out this app.
Note: http://WhatTheBus.com is a working name for this project because it appeals to m warped sense of humor. It will likely appear under the sanitary ShowBus moniker: http://showb.us.
