[Year 12 Its] PHP and Software Development 2007

[Ken Griffiths]

I hear what you're saying, Con and Graham, but I am still uneasy.

I'd like to probe the _intentions_ behind the u3o2 requirement "to produce 
a software module suitable for
  implementation on a portable computing device" . BTW I just did a word 
search for 'portable' on the earlier pdf draft of the new study design and 
found nothing.

Is it a late addition? It would seem to me to be a  move in sympathy with 
young people's enthusiasm for mobile phones and the industry trend toward 
portable-pc style PDAs/phones (though these are less popular than phones).

To just interpret the new requirement as a localhost testing server 
environment seems a weak response to the intention. Cos what works on a 
laptop wouldn't work so well on a PDA. Surely your module would be expected 
to be testable on a PDA?  And I now notice that u4o1 requires the same 
language as u3o2.

The on-line footy comp would't be on-line if it were on a mobile device, 
would it? (For a start, mobiles are off-line from time to time)

Googling didn't find me any users of PDA Apache/php. Far more obvious were 
references to maintaining your site with a PDA. Anyway, uploading data from 
a portable is the current growth area. Surely the VCAA 'portable' idea 
wasn't to move away from networking?

[I've _done_ that classroom setup of individual Apache/MySQL localhosts. 
This year I'm using a student server box remote in the LAN, and SQLite with 
PDO calls. (SQLite is excellent for all student purposes. I've successfully 
ported all the MYSQL I've wanted to, to SQLite). I had thought of 
presenting _this_ to colleagues until I read the new study design 
'portable' clause]

Do we go back to Java?

Ken Griffiths
Deer Park SC