JSON Document management application to support a real-time mobile quiz application. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Software Engineering by Julian Wreford 15st January 2016 BSc – Software Engineering Cardiff School of Management Cardiff Metropolitan University, Llandaff, Cardiff, South Wales, United Kingdom i Declaration I hereby declare that this dissertation entitled Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals is entirely my own work, and it has never been submitted nor is it currently being submitted for any other degree. Candidate: Julian Wreford Signature: Date: Supervisor: Stuart McNeil Signature: Date: ii Abstract With the growth of mobile devices and availability of mobile applications from games to utilities they have become part of everyday life. Real time mobile quiz applications have also been increasing in popularity over recent years and are now available across all smartphone and tablet devices. This project introduces quiz topic category specialisation to a real-time mobile quiz application and covered the developed of a document management application that produces and manages quiz question documents in JavaScript Object Notation in support of the quiz. This project also produced a fully functional mobile quiz application and a server- side component to support this. The aim of this project was to develop a document management application to produce JavaScript Object Notation question documents and answer the question could the document management application produce these question documents in a way that can support a real-time mobile quiz application. Development methodology combined a mix of the Spiral Model and Software Prototyping and this project used user testing and performance testing evaluations in assessing its success. From the user testing results it was found that using the document management and mobile client applications proved quite challenging due to difficulties users had navigating and using them. This fact highlighted future work to improve this. Other results from user evaluation revealed that the mobile quiz application worked well and to expected standard in terms of performance speed. Technical evaluation speed tests carried out on the server application, corroborate user evaluations, it found the server was able to query a database and produce question documents to facilitate a mobile quiz game within the expected times. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my project supervisor Stuart McNeil, for his advice and support during this project. I would also like to thank the participants who dedicated their time and gave valuable feedback for the purposes of project evaluation. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 1 Figures and Tables ..................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Project Overview ........................................................................................................ 7 1.1.1 Project Aim .................................................................................................... 7 1.1.2 Project Objectives .......................................................................................... 7 1.1.3 Minimum Application Functional Requirements .......................................... 7 1.1.4 Minimum Application Performance Requirements ...................................... 9 1.1.5 Project Deliverables ..................................................................................... 10 1.2 Project Outline ......................................................................................................... 10 1.2.1 Development of Ideas .................................................................................. 10 1.2.2 What’s New? ................................................................................................ 11 1.2.3 Project Timeline ........................................................................................... 12 1.2.4 Evaluation Approach .................................................................................... 12 1.2.5 Project Planning ........................................................................................... 13 1.2.6 Project Methodology ................................................................................... 14 1.2.6.1 Spiral Model .................................................................................... 14 1.2.6.2 Software Prototyping ...................................................................... 15 Chapter 2 – Background Research .......................................................................................... 15 2.1 Mobile and Application Industry .............................................................................. 15 2.1.1 Mobile Application Market .......................................................................... 15 2.1.2 Smartphone Market .................................................................................... 16 2.1.3 Mobile Industry Trends................................................................................ 16 2.1.4 Monetisation Business Models .................................................................... 16 2.1.7 Quiz App and TV Trend ................................................................................ 16 2.1.8 Areas for Future Growth .............................................................................. 17 2.1.8.1 Industry Predictions ........................................................................ 17 2.2 Mobile Application Development Platforms (MADP) .............................................. 18 2.2.1 Native Development .................................................................................... 18 2.2.2 Cross-Platform Development ...................................................................... 19 2.3 Real-Time Mobile Quiz Application Technologies.................................................... 21 1 2.3.1 Study of Existing Real-Time Mobile Application Quizzes ............................ 21 2.3.1.1 Quiz Up ............................................................................................ 21 2.3.1.2 Trivia Crack ...................................................................................... 22 2.3.1.3 Quiz Clash ........................................................................................ 23 2.3.1.4 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 24 2.5 Mongo NoSQL Database .......................................................................................... 24 2.5.1 Documents ................................................................................................... 25 2.5.2 Collections.................................................................................................... 25 2.5.3 Arrays and Indexing ..................................................................................... 26 2.6 JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) ........................................................................... 26 2.6.1 Data Types ................................................................................................... 26 2.6.2 Key Value Pairs ............................................................................................. 27 2.6.3 Documents ................................................................................................... 27 2.7 Integrated Development Environments .................................................................. 28 2.7.1 Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013 .................................................. 28 2.7.2 Unity IDE ...................................................................................................... 28 2.7.3 Eclipse IDE .................................................................................................... 29 2.8 Programming Languages .......................................................................................... 29 2.8.1 C# Programming Language .......................................................................... 29 2.8.2 Java Programming Language ....................................................................... 29 2.9 Unified Modelling Language (UML) Class Diagrams ................................................ 29 Chapter 3 –Application Design & Preparation ....................................................................... 30 3.1 JSON Document Specification and MongoDB Hierarchy ......................................... 30 3.2 Document Management Application ....................................................................... 38 3.3 Mobile Quiz and Server Application ......................................................................... 39 3.3.1 Agile Software Development and MoSCoW ................................................ 39 3.4 User Application Testing Scenarios .......................................................................... 40 Chapter 4 – Application Development ................................................................................... 40 4.1 Overview..................................................................................................................