Conceptual Design Of Distributed Messaging System: Essay Overview And Analysis.

This assessment requires you critically analyse the system design process of a project using the theory and principles studied during the course. This assessment item relates to the course learning outcomes 1 to 5.

In this group assessment, you are required to write a report which critically analyses the conceptual design phase of a systems engineering project. Projects might include designing a bridge, a dam, an environmentally-conscious building or a mechatronic system. You might not have been involved in the project personally, but some connection with the project would make the analysis more meaningful. Choose your project carefully because in assignment 2, your group will need to analyse the preliminary design and detailed design phases of the project. If you are unsure as to whether your chosen project has sufficient depth/detail, consult with your tutor. You will also have the opportunity to work on the assignment in the tutorials for the unit. Every group must do a different project. Also, projects from previous years can not be reused.

Challenging network for running multiple applications reliably

In this paper an overview of distributed messaging system is provided. The conceptual design of the process is carried out by explain the details of a project in detail. Distributed messaging system is a challenging network as it allows many applications and operations to run together in a reliable way. Conceptual design phase is an important as well as early phase of design process. Conceptual design phase is carried out by drawing sketches and models o that it can be carried out accordingly. This report covers the design phase of distributed messaging system. This report contains a detail description of the working of system. The main focus for this assessment is on the conceptual design phase. In the next assignment the primary and detail design for the same project will be followed.

The analysis is undertaken on the project named as “Distributed messaging system” and it was designed so that it can be scale up the medium of communication. This was designed so that both sender and receiver can communicate with each other in an effective manner. Distributed messaging system is an advanced version as compared to the traditional message server. The architecture on which distributed messaging system works is analysed so that a design process brings out positive outcome. In this a stream of message is passed over the network in the form of bytes (Winkler, 2016). The receiver can be located at any location; distributed messaging system allows send message to more than one client at a same time irrespective of the location. Distributed messaging system also checks out the path in which there would be minimum traffic.  Before designing this project all the requirements are found. It offers a real time service with an accurate communication system (Singh, Sahay,  Muzzio, Ierapetritou and Ramachandran, 2014). The special features of this project are that all the mails can be retrieved from remote location and messages can also be extracted easily from the server.

• System design process- It is a process through which architecture, modules, interface of a project is found to meet the specified requirements. The system design process is used to build an understanding of the project requirements and establishing the performance by analysing all the milestones that could be faced in the project (Singh, Sahay,  Muzzio, Ierapetritou and Ramachandran, 2014). The process of system design includes understanding eth demand of users and then establishing a way through which objective could be attained. It is a life cycle that helps in developing an application or having a rapid application development.
• Conceptual design- It is the first phase of a project and built before staring a project. It design or deploy the requirement in the form of documentation so that it can be controlled at later stage. This phase just identify the flow in which development will be carried by clarifying all the requirements (Magnoni, 2016). So, that a productive project could be designed. This phase covers various steps, first is identifying the requirement and then developing the system once the requirement is identified. In this phase all the engineering activities are carried out by analysing the functionality and requirements (He,  Fu and Hägg, 2015). This phase is important as it outlines all the specification that would be carried in the project.
• System decompositionand design definition has three phases; conceptual design study phase, preliminary design phase and then a detailed design phase.
• Primarily design phase- This is a phase in which all the requirements of the client are sketched in an appropriate manner (Grønbæk, Grudin,  Bødker and Bannon, 2017). This step majorly focuses on converting the requirement in the architectural form so that structure could be identified and it can be developed. The primarily design covers the cost estimation, finding out the software’s and platforms that would be needed to deploy the project (Grohman, Lennox Industries Inc, 2016).
• Detailed design- In the detail designed phase, the project is analysed in a more presided way. By identifying all the operations and the flow in which project will work (Grønbæk, Grudin,  Bødker and Bannon, 2017). It is actually a blue print of the engineering project; it covers the overall operational cost, scheduling procedure along with the recovery plans so that system could be recovered back easily from the failure.

The conceptual design of distributed system starts with understanding the scenario briefly.

In this design phase, the needs and requirements are identified then system specifications are built. This phase also defines the technical guidelines of the system. It helps in overall development of the project.

In this, every time a user tries to start a communication, a session is stared and its builds up a communication link. It checks the user id in the database, if the record is found in the database then only a link set up. Otherwise, it responds that a message is not found in the database record (Grohman and Filbeck, Lennox Industries Inc, 2015). There are various options in terms of security, a user can keep the message stored or the message could be deleted after the session expires. Thus, distributed messaging system is easy and reliable way that helps user to communicate with each other. When the request is send from the sender, it is checked that the user is authenticated, and then only communication is established (Filbeck,  Wallaert and Thorson, Lennox Industries 2017). The user in the system do not communicate with database directly, they work on a request reply concept. They request for a certain operation to the messenger program which future communicates with chat recorder which future communicates with database. Conceptual design is the first step that helps in knowing the idea behind this project(Filbeck,  Wallaert and Thorson, Lennox Industries 2017). So, that detail understanding and functional requirements are analysed in the later section.

Analysis of 'Distributed messaging system'

The conceptual design of distributed messaging system, involves having a clear understanding of the objective. Thus, from the analyses it was found that whenever a user wants to communicate with other user, user starts up a chat session which helps the user to connect to the database.  The user then chooses that the chat should be recorded or not. If the private mode of communication is selected than it assures that message is transmitted over a network in an encrypted way. Otherwise the information is stored in the database. Once the connection is made with the valid users, the user begins chat session. The recorder is then initialized which make sure that a secure communication takes place.  The above diagram helps in understanding the design in a clear procedure about how the system will work. This would be helpful for developing the other documents in the late development cycle.

Identification of the aim- The aim of distributed messaging system is to allow customers to communicate with the other customers irrespective of their location (Filbeck,  Wallaert and Thorson, Lennox Industries 2017). It also makes sure that communication take place in a reliable and secure way.

Feasibility analysis- The feasibility analyses states that system is stable in all the conditions. The loopholes of the project are found. Like in some cases, it stores the information on the network which is not encrypted. This may be problematic situation in terms of authentication. This involves certain test cases that help in finding out the   resources that would be used, understanding the technical limitations (Evans and Brooks, TigerText, 2016). Like in case of distributed management system all the technical consequences are found, like the hardware and software on which the system cannot be deployed.  In the feasibility phase, the implantation idea is checked, this can be done by input a value and checking the output. If the output obtained is similar to the desired output then it could be deployed.

System requirements analysis- To deploy distributed messaging system it is important to have a secure database system that stores all the information about the authorised user (Espino, Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc, 2014). It also helps in defining access control list so that only valid users are allowed to access the information. The requirement of distributed messaging system is that sender can send information or can request to the database to make connection. Later, database can check the request in the database. If the user is valid they can future communicate with the user (Espino, Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc, 2014). The user has a right to establish or disconnect the communication at any time. The messaging system also allow user to send and receive at multimedia information.

Design phase of distributed messaging system

System specification- The system should have high security constraints, as they use the application to share their sensitive information. As loyalty of the customer is directly related on the security measures. The other requirement of the system checks that users are authenticated and they make sure that users are legitimate (Ehn, 2017). The information that is stored in the database should be reliable ad all the redundant and duplicate information should be removed. The system should be extensible which assures that it support voice messages, image and other multimedia messages.

Thus, it can be clearly stated that conceptual design phase is important for every project before entering in the preliminary design phase (Buede and Miller, 2016). This phase helps in optimizing the result and future developing the project so that the effectiveness could be maximised in terms of cost ratio, financial constraints and then mitigating the risk (Coffman, Vanderveen, Lee and Schlotterbeck, CareFusion 2017). In the distributed messaging system the main motive us to assure that communication is secure and reliable.

This phase helped the system by focusing on all the activities that would be undertaken. It also helps in distributing the user requirement and allocating the resources so that functions could be completed by assuring that performance criteria could be met. It also assures the traceability of information (Coffman, Vanderveen, Lee and Schlotterbeck, CareFusion 2017). The document prepared in this phase helps in building document in preliminary interfaces and in the detailed documentation phase. In the frame of the systems engineering actions different system architectures and operation concepts are elaborated and compared against the requisite (Bhatnagar and Reddy,  2014).

It can be evaluated that, distributed messaging system has gained popularity as compared to the old traditional method. In today’s trend the role of this system is to offer an easy communication between both the parties without missing the availability. This report helps in analysing the performance of the system by focusing on survivability, availability and inters process communication (Bennett,  Babu,  Morkhandikar and Gururaj Nuance, 2015).  It was found that while designing the system it should have the capability to operate in all the platforms irrespective of the location. It also helps in increasing the speed of communication.

Conclusion:

It can be concluded that, distributed messaging system will be adopted by every individual in the society as it offers various benefits. It offers user to communicate with the other customer anytime and that too from any location. In this report, the conceptual design is carried out of distributed message system. This helps in understanding the functionality of the system and the flow in which system would work. System design models are an important part for every project as they helps in understanding the idea and then proposing basic requirements that are needed proceed in the development cycle. It helps in analysing the idea that is generated so that system could be developed in a fixed time period. The main idea for developing the conceptual design of a system is to make sure that feasibility, performance, cost, risk and compliance is maintained.

References: 

Bennett, I.M., Babu, B.R., Morkhandikar, K. and Gururaj, P., Nuance Communications Inc, (2015). Distributed real time speech recognition system. U.S. Patent 9,076,448.

Bhatnagar, P. and Reddy, S., AUTHOMATE Inc, (2014). System, design and process for strong authentication using bidirectional OTP and out-of-band multichannel authentication. U.S. Patent 8,763,097.

Buede, D.M. and Miller, W.D., (2016). The engineering design of systems: models and methods. John Wiley & Sons.

Coffman, D.J., Vanderveen, T.W., Lee, B.A. and Schlotterbeck, D.L., CareFusion 303 Inc, (2017). Distributed remote asset and medication management drug delivery system. U.S. Patent 9,600,633.

Ehn, P., (2017). Scandinavian design: On participation and skill. In Participatory design (pp. 41-77). CRC Press.

Espino, M., Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc, (2014). Method and system for brokering messages in a distributed system. U.S. Patent 8,849,892.

Evans, J. and Brooks, B., TigerText, Inc., (2016). Messaging system apparatuses circuits and methods of operation thereof. U.S. Patent 9,443,227.

Filbeck, A., Wallaert, T.E. and Thorson, T.H., Lennox Industries Inc, (2017). System and method for zoning a distributed-architecture heating, ventilation and air conditioning network. U.S. Patent 9,651,925.

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