Seun:
This is a really tough decision for me. You can enter but let me think about the prize issue for a while.

morufoye: game on

PrinceDudu: Add java nah, abeg.

askphantom: @Seun: whats your beef with PHP?

I tried to create a project on google code bt couldn't can you explain hw to do this.

hydiciousb: chai i regret not knowing hw to build site o. but that money small o compared to what jamb will offer u if u were to sell to them.

Seun:
Please express interest ASAP by creating a public repo and posting a link to it here.


You can learn Python easily using links provided earlier in this thread


Learn Python using the links provided above. Your eyes will be opened to wondrous things you never imagined.


Go to code.google.com and click on "create a new project". You have to be signed in to your Google Account.
If Google Code doesn't work for you, try Bitbucket. The most important thing is to setup a public hg repo.

IT Experts working for JAMB can just follow this contest and download the winning script when it's over. They can take it, polish it, and install it on their server, free of charge. I don't mind. I'm just doing this to expose the hidden programming talents among us.

Slyr0x: Personally, I believe JAMB's issue is a "capacity-handling" one. .It goes offline as a result of tooo many people trying to connect at the same time. Just a practical example of what a DOS (Denial Of Service) is.

Buying a server and allocating more resources to it should solve it.

But I might be wrong. .afterall, what do I know?

captalex:
Afterall what do you know?.
sly,we've seen your posts and the damage you've caused.quit being modest and attack this challenge,
you guys are the pros.

doncigalo:

Nope you're way of mark, even though it is a read only website, it still requires the CPU resource of the server to load and serve the request to the users web browser. So if you have let say a million people trying to read or access data from the database on the server, the server's CPU needs to have enough RAM and processing power to handle all these requests if not it will CRASH.

Any optimisation that has to done will be done on the server end, by either configuring server to see if tweeking the load balance between the memory buffer and RAM will increase performance, if this doesn't work then generally you need to physically upgrade the server itself.

If at all there is any possibility of doing it script wise, then SUEN this is where transaction & concurrency management comes into play irrespective of whether it is a read only or read/write database. DB adimns are all to familiar with this.

JAMB needs a dedicated server to host these records, most likely they are using a shared server like those used for web hosting packages.

But lets see, it will be interesting to see what pips come up with.

How are you going to test their solutions ??

Fayimora: [font=Courier][size=11pt]@Seun
Errm I dont understand what exactly is going on here! Who conducts the exams? I am sure they have THE database. How exactly are you going to get access to that or is there an API that the developers would make use of? Are they supposed to mock a db?(not a good idea) Couldn't see anything making that clear enough in your description.

Hmm I thought I read a previous post saying "I also want to bring great programmers out of the closet (for jobs)". I think it should be rephrased to "I also want to bring great Python programmers out of the closet (for jobs)"

BTW, I sent you 4 emails when you launched NL2 but didn't get a reply.

Seun:
You'll create your own database and populate it with randomly generated data.
I'm thinking of developing a reference DB schema to make things easier for newbies.

Seun:
Great programmers can learn new languages. Python is the easiest language to learn. Piece of cake for you.

Seun:
I didn't get any of them. I don't know why .... where did you send the mails to?

askphantom: The problem with jamb website first has to do with scaling of the application to handle the heavy traffic that they get each time the result is released. During registration, over 1.5 million students use the website at different intervals over a period of time (several months). But during result checking, at least 1/3 of the number will check jamb result at almost the same time causing an overload of the server. No matter how sophisticated the application is and language used to develop it, if the server is not scaled to handle the amount of traffic, it will always crash. Twitter has crashed several times and it was not because of the application or development technique or language used to develop it. So i think coming up with a way JAMB can use multiple servers to handle result checking and scale the application will be better.

Just my thoughts.

@Seun: whats your beef with PHP?

doncigalo: @fewj nice one!! thanks for spotting that, cloud servers are a good way to go, especially when combined with a master-slave configuration setup(kudos to a4extra for mentioning that) and not forgetting to mention that standard cloud hosting companies such as rackspace and ukfast provide load balancers as part of your cloud hosting package.

@a4extra Ur on point !! just one thing doh, u cant cache web pages that need a network resource irrespective of whether it has a get or post parameter, If the page requires a connection to a network resource like a DB then it cant be cached especially a login page which requires a connection to a DB.

doncigalo:

Nope you're way of mark, even though it is a read only website, it still requires the CPU resource of the server to load and serve the request to the users web browser. So if you have let say a million people trying to read or access data from the database on the server, the server's CPU needs to have enough RAM and processing power to handle all these requests if not it will CRASH.

Any optimisation that has to done will be done on the server end, by either configuring server to see if tweeking the load balance between the memory buffer and RAM will increase performance, if this doesn't work then generally you need to physically upgrade the server itself.

If at all there is any possibility of doing it script wise, then SUEN this is where transaction & concurrency management comes into play irrespective of whether it is a read only or read/write database. DB adimns are all to familiar with this.

JAMB needs a dedicated server to host these records, most likely they are using a shared server like those used for web hosting packages.

But lets see, it will be interesting to see what pips come up with.

How are you going to test their solutions ??

toluxa1: Seun please I have a question. I am currently learning Python and you were actually the one that inspired me to pick it up. Am not a beginner to programming though. I want to know if Python has a Certification they do like Microsoft, JAVA etc? If yes can one do it in Nigeria?