Technologies of the Web

To a certain extent, project management is project management, regardless of the industry. As an established discipline, project management, has its eternal truths, systems that work no matter what project you’re managing. In theory, project management is portable from industry to industry; however, project management is more than a theory, it’s a practice. The project manager’s practice involves communication, problem solving, and decision making, all of which require a solid technical grasp of the field. Even in the role of facilitator and motivator, the project manager needs technical knowledge to earn the credibility and respect of team members.
This chapter introduces some of the basic technology underlying websites and website development. It is meant as a jumping-off point. To those new to website development, this discussion will at least help you become conversant in the technology and know the sorts of questions you should be asking. It will also help you identify the gaps in your knowledge. It’s up to you to bring yourself up to speed, whether through outside reading, classes, seminars, or workshops. Project managers of websites often grow into the position from a specialty within the development process and boast detailed technical knowledge within the specialty. As for the specialized skills plied by others on the team, they may possess only superficial familiarity. The systems analyst, for instance, may be an expert on the architecture of a database but may have no understanding of what the designer has done to prepare image files that go into it.
CLIENT-SERVER SYSTEMS
The Internet is sometimes referred to as a network of networks, a grand and complex system of clients and servers. In a world where computers and networks are ubiquitous in all sorts of organizations, the terms client and server are bandied about regularly, but they are not always clearly understood. The operating premise of a network is that computers are called on to perform specialized tasks.

Internet Protocols. How Files Travel the Internet

The many clients and servers that constitute the Internet can cooperate because they speak the same language. Beneath the many operating systems and software programs working the Internet is a lingua franca, specifically a series of protocols. For instance, when you surf your way to a new site, your Web browser is using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and a URL (uniform resource locator) to identify a file to be retrieved. TCP (transmission control protocol) and IP (Internet protocol) route the request to the proper server.
Applications require specific formats in order to present the data in a useful format. If you have ever opened up an e-mail attachment and found gobbledygook ASCII text when you expected a stunning picture of your newborn niece, then you know what happens when the requirements are not met. In networking parlance, this is referred to as the presentation level. Examples of data formats that make files useful over the Internet are HTML, JPEG, or MIME.

TCP/IP

TCP/IP is the protocol that takes care of all of the networking details of a file so that the application can treat it like a simple data stream. TCP and IP work closely together and often are considered as one but are actually separate protocols. IP is the most fundamental protocol. It runs on all the computers of a network as well as routers, which connect two or more networks together, allowing these multiple machines and networks to function as one logical network. IP is so generic and undemanding that just about any network technology that might turn up in a network can handle it. IP is used to make routing decisions. Using hierarchical addresses, it finds a route for a packet and gets it to the other end.

DOMAIN NAME SERVERS

IP addresses effectively identify computers on the Internet and enable routing. The numerical IP addresses work fine for computers but are not so friendly to humans-we like names. Domain name server (DNS) is the naming system of the Internet. Domain names, like IP addresses, are hierarchical. The names are processed from right to left. The top-level domain is to the far right, common examples of which are: com, edu, gov, org, net.

APPLICATION PROTOCOLS

The primary application protocol at work on the World Wide Web is HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). HTTP is the common protocol that enables any browser (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera) to access the same Web page.

INTERNET FILE FORMATS

At the presentation level, applications depend on specific file formats so that data can be displayed in a useful way, as intended. Graphics, for example, need to be either JPEGs or GIFs to display through a Web browser. As you manage the content development of your website project, you will be working with multimedia content in any number of file formats.
All Web browsers read a few basic file formats, which are sometimes called Web-native. The format for text is HTML (hypertext markup language). JavaScript adds features that HTML cannot support independently-programmatic features such as variables, logic branching, and math calculations.