Site building procedures

foamypup

I have been arguing with a peer at work for weeks about the proper way to build a multi-leveled website. As in:

LevelX = DB
LevelY = Scripts to interact with DB
LevelZ = Scripts to display webpage based on data pulled from LevelX.

OR:
BackEnd
Middleman
FrontEnd

My personal opinion is that the foundation of the site should be built first. The DB level if you will. Its the core of the site and all things should revolve around it.

Next would be the scripts and tools that interact with the DB level.

ANd finally the displaying of the data and the site layout.

My peer swears that is wrong and believes it should be done exactly the opposite.

Can some of the more professional programmers in this community shed some light on this for myself and my peer.

Thanks

James

Anon

Well, I think neither of you is correct. :-)

#1: Define the business objectives and ensure that EVERYONE signs off and is 100% clear about them.

#2. Rough out the user interface -- on a whiteboard, not in code -- in order to define how you want the application to behave (not look and feel).

#3. Analyze the data that will be required to support #2, and define the data model.

#4. Define how the UI will interact with the data model.

#5. NOW you can write code. It doesn't make any difference whether you work on the data i/o portion first or the application-behavior layer, because you're working toward a clearly predefined target. It DOES make a difference whether you entangle functionality in presentation, however -- don't do it. The absolute top level should be so relatively free of PHP that any HTML coder should be able to read and maintain it for look and feel updates.

My USD .02/EUR .02338, anyway.

reagent

This being said:

#2. Rough out the user interface -- on a whiteboard, not in code -- in order to define how you want the application to behave (not look and feel).

I find that it helps the developers and the client if you actually mock up some prototypes in html/php that exhibit a majority of the functionality for the site. This will catch any navigability/functionality problems before the database schema is finalized. Remember to use php includes, etc and make as much of this code reusable.

I know that prototyping can be 'evil' sometimes, but I think this is a good approach.

thoughts?