Part 1:

Based on your personal experience on the previous assignment so just tell what you found hard and easy, etc. Dont be too short but not long either, 200 - 250 words.

Application Architecture

Please respond to the following in not more than 200 words:

Summarize your experience determining an architecture for the payroll application.

Which aspects did you find the easiest, and which were the most challenging for you?

NOTE: "Case Study 2 asked you to devise the application architecture for a new payroll application. What were your thoughts in choosing among the options, and what sources did you use to flesh out the details?"

Part 2:

In a separate post, follow up on one of your fellow students in substantive post of up to 150 words that further the discussion. For example, you may support or politely challenge a post with your own insights or experience, make a suggestion, or ask probing follow-up questions. (choose one)

a. Reading Chapter 10 in our text for the week was helpful to understand and gain insight into the systems we are actually already exposed to in some way. As a user of a payroll system, I thought about the features I use and thought more into the architecture of it based on the course information for the week.

Putting both perspectives together allowed me to come up with what the existing configuration is and what solution I would put in place to enhance the architecture of the payroll application. The most challenging was determining the format of the flow or the architecture in my Visio diagram.

b. My personal experience with the payroll application was easy and a great project to dive into. I found the client and server roles easy to follow and I believe I was able to explain the purpose throughout the research of my paper. I also thought the diagram was easy to create and also easy to explain. I look forward to the next lesson.

c. I'll be honest, I picked client/server for my payroll architecture mainly because it was the one I understand the best. If I had to guess, I'd bet most folks picked "the cloud" or some derivative of it for their architectures.

I'm not familiar with cloud-based architectures, so I picked the one I knew. But aren't cloud architectures really just client/server architectures but just on somebody else's servers? Sure, the underlying cloud database might be something more robust/scalable than a standard SQL database, but other than that, what's the difference? Feel free to chime in on that.

Overall I enjoyed my time thinking about the payroll application. When writing the paper, I thought mainly of the payroll application that I use at work. It fell right in line with the paper requirements. The only exception is that my work payroll application is available on the internet instead of a private WAN. I assumed that the WAN in the assignment would be on a private (but distributed) network that would require a custom office connection or VPN.

The hardest part of the payroll application was the bells and whistles that the payroll application must have in order for it to function. Inputing your time is what most thought of I bet, but there are additional things that have to occur in a payroll application. For example, managers may have to approve/disapprove signed timesheets from their workers.