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The implementation was designed with a web interface in mind. On that note, a combination of HTML, Javascript, and CSS was used to direct the proper visual representation of elements. The main element, and also challenge, of the project was the map. Both the visual appearance of the map itself and the databases that supplied information about population, rainfall, current towers, and newly added towers were generated using the Google Fusion Tables and the Google Maps APIAPIs. Given the scope of this project, this was the correct choice choice saved us a lot of time, as trying to implement the same sort of functionality from scratch would have ended disastrously. However, using the API proved to be very difficult at times. A lot of the necessary functionality was not available in the public API and therefore , sort of had to be hacked together with various workarounds. On the positive side, using Google Maps allows us the time to implement a very appealing visual style, and the familiarity of every user with the API Google Maps interface definitely increased usability.
There are certain features that we were unable to implement due to the fact that their difficult , either because their difficulty exceeded the scope of this class. Most , or because they were impossible to implement within the Google Maps API. One crucial feature that we had to eliminate was the Overlay vs Intersect button, which essentially provided a way of doing an OR vs. AND query. Because Google Fusion Tables does not support an inner join, which is a standard SQL operation, we had to eliminate the Intersect mode. Most other implementation problems did not affect the usability of the design, however, and so overall, the implementation was a success.
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