CyberCinema: The Adventure Begins

Throughout this book, we will use a fictitious Web site, CyberCinema, as an example. Let's say an ambitious entrepreneur has managed to bamboozle some venture capitalists out of a few million bucks to help him start his business: an online movie review site. Maybe he just quit his job as a movie reviewer at a prestigious national newspaper. He knows all about movie reviews and the film industry. He's hired a talented editorial staff, a designer, and one techie—that's you.

Your mission is to create the technical infrastructure for this company. The immediate requirements are clear: Build the Web site. But you know from talking to your new boss that you may want to syndicate these movie reviews to other Web sites as well. You may want to push them out to WAP phones or other wireless devices, or you may want people to be able to dial a phone number and listen to a review being read aloud. Of course, because you're a discerning engineer, the thing that immediately springs to mind is all the beer you'll be able to afford once your options vest. The second thing that springs to mind is that this looks like a job for XML.

How right you are!

One of your technical challenges is to build a publishing system for the movie reviews. First, you must assemble a set of requirements. Because you're not an expert in movie reviews, where should you go to find these requirements? You could buy every book ever written by Leonard Maltin, but you'll probably be better off consulting your user community, the review writers. By synthesizing the requirements of the writers (who will use the system from the inside) and the design of the Web site (which is the outward-facing view to the world), you can assemble a reliable set of basic requirements.