Case Study: Simplifying a Complex Development and Code Management Project with Komodo IDE

Second Story Interactive Develops Online Database for the National Postal Museum using Komodo IDE

The Challenge

Second Story is a Portland-based studio that creates innovative user experiences including interactive kiosks, video walls, and web sites. With a team of designers, motion graphics artists, 3D animators, programmers, and producers, Second Story has an impressive portfolio, including sites for Smithsonian Institution museums, kiosks for the National Archives and Records Administration, and an interactive 3D tour of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

Recently, Second Story was tasked with creating Arago™, an online database for the National Postal Museum that would amass their collection of over 300,000 objects and present them in a user-friendly interface. Server-side project lead David Brewer is a web application developer with Second Story who specializes in building back-ends and HTML interfaces for collection database websites.

Brewer's primary challenge was managing Arago's size and complexity. The project required writing scripts to translate data from a third-party collection management tool, managing researcher contributions, and, of course, creating the website itself.

The Approach

On previous projects, Brewer "got by" using Macromedia Dreamweaver and Eclipse, but found Dreamweaver's scope limiting, and never became comfortable with the Eclipse interface. He began exploring alternatives to manage the huge amount of code Arago™ would require.

"Our clients tend to have established infrastructures that dictate the technologies we use," said Brewer. "On the server side, we often work in multiple languages, depending on our clients' needs."

Arago™ would consist of an MSSQL database with Flash and HTML interfaces, to be developed using ActivePerl. Seeking a robust, multi-language development environment, Brewer evaluated Komodo IDE. Impressed by the quality and depth of features, Second Story purchased Komodo for every server-side programmer in their studio.

The Solution

Komodo offered Brewer and other developers at Second Story a lot of new functionality. Right away, the syntax highlighting and syntax checking made it easier to spot typos before they turned into bugs, while the debugger tracked down more subtle problems. The code browser and bookmark features simplified locating code to reference and jump back to it as needed.

Development was faster as well. Using the Perl interactive shell for quick hacks and testing, and creating regular expressions with the Rx Toolkit, Brewer shaved hours from his development time.

Given the scope of the Arago™ project, Second Story also found the project management features invaluable. Project files were organized independently of the project directory structure, locating frequently used files and directories near the project root. They also wrote a toolkit of macros and scripts, which they put in the project file for easy access.

The Results

Stamps are difficult to show off in a museum, but perfect for the web. For the Arago™ virtual exhibit, Second Story created a site where users can browse and search the enormous collection of objects (of which several thousand are currently online), learn about the history of philately and the postal operations and make their own virtual stamp collection to share with friends. Behind the scenes, Second Story built a system for volunteer philatelic researchers to collaborate, write content and create exhibits from the object collections.

With the project completed, Brewer remains firmly committed to Komodo IDE. "I can't imagine what working on Arago™ would have been like without it," he said. "Komodo solved so many of the problems we struggled with when using less capable tools. Developing Perl in Komodo IDE was an absolute joy compared to our previous approaches."

The Second Story team now uses the latest release, Komodo IDE 4, which adds useful JavaScript and CSS support. And for Brewer, the new HTML support means Komodo IDE is the only tool he needs for all his web development.

See the amazing results of Second Story's work at http://arago.si.edu/ or http://www.secondstory.com/.