The London Forex Broadsheet (LFB)
The LFB brought us specs and requirements. Nice.
The LFB's requirements were clear from the beginning. They needed a high availability system to syndicate proprietary content in a standard way. We looked past the buzzwords and realized that The LFB was looking for a custom RSS system through which they could syndicate their news content.
We picked RSS because it would allow their customers to easily consume the news feeds while still allowing The LFB to control access to the feed. To build this system, we decided to deploy the Symfony framework on a LAMP stack. The final product was a custom RSS system along with an API for partners to retrieve specific news stories. Although building the application was challenging, the more interesting aspect was ensuring high availability.
High availability is a term that gets thrown around a lot without a precise definition. Luckily, The LFB knew that they wanted their application to be available 24/7/365, because their partners relied on the service. To satisfy this, we set up the application on redundant servers so that the failure of one server doesn't compromise the service.
Technologies: Symfony Framework (PHP), JavaScript/AJAX, Adobe Flex.