The Backend of $tock $utra

Consider you own a reputed software development company. Each time you release a software as freeware, it acquires a status of shareware .Everyone expect a high performance delivery from you.

Here comes the problem of being reputed. You have to release the latest version of your widely accepted working software within a fortnight. You are at the dearth of ideas. But you have an opportunity to establish a new level for your company.

Would you capture it or just let it slip?

It Looks quiet impossible …

But we made it possible in $tock $utra this time in Infotsav ’08 .We had an older version of ‘$tock $utra ‘ in working condition and have to deliver the latest version for Infotsav’08 within a fortnight .We accepted the challenge and came up with the software that powers Infotsav.

“Invent, Everything is Possible”

Caved as bottom line for $tock $utra.

The all credits goes to $aurabh Goel , our team leader and technical head of $tock $utra. I cannot forget the geeky approach of Vika$h Garg or the Allahabadi aggression of $atya .All proved to be building blocks of New Technology.

Remembering the deadline we always were at least four on a cot and had spent the whole night sitting in front of laptops. The insomniac endeavors of all parsed some non garbage outputs at the end.

As expected we received accolades from everyone.

The critics were amazed, patrons were appraised.

1500+ registrations ,1.5 million page impressions ,more than hundred forum posts from users within two days speaks the truth of eminence of $tock $utra .The alacrity of Gamers can be measured with the fact that there were three Gamers with two ID’s in Top Ten ,instead of allowance of one ID per user. We were bound to delete the second ID to maintain healthy game spirit.

The Technical Edge:

$tock $utra, when first came into existence, was coded in PHP using MYSQL as database. In its first year, it was purely static with just one data refresh in a day i.e. at the closing of the NSE. Even having various session related errors and basic interfacing, it was able to cater more than 500 users.

When we get this project in our 2^nd year, we first of all decided to make it real time simulation so as to make it more close to real market trading. Initially it seemed really tough as we had to continuously parse the data from NSE without any time lag. For this, we in fact made a shell script and ran it using a ‘C’ program with a sleep of around 10 sec initially but then reduced it to 3 sec.

Finally our efforts were rewarded and game ran in real time which really attracted a huge crowd over more than 900. But with this advancement, various new problems aroused related to handling huge bulk of data. The database became too heavy that MYSQL itself was taking more then 50% of processing time on server. As a matter of fact, this was really a huge threat to the game. By the end of the game there were more than 15000 entries in the transaction table. Due to this bulkiness of database, we couldn’t provide the rank in real time and that really pissed us off as we put in lots of efforts. The interfacing was more catchy this time and smooth and people really liked that.

Now once again during Infotsav’08, the responsibility of $tock $utra was on our shoulders and this time we decided to overcome all the drawbacks and turn it into a phenomenon. For the first time we decided to implement AJAX despite of the fact that none of us was very well acquainted with it. But we took it as a challenge and put in 2-3 nights together to work on it. At moments, we really thought of dropping the idea of Ajax but then too we couldn’t back off as this was our last year working on $tock $utra. This time we mostly have rewritten the code and made the MYSQL queries more optimized and also made an enhancement by adding the SHORTSELL feature to it which proved to be the next level of Excitement and added new life to it.

The major part spent on the interfacing to make it more user friendly and attractive so as to allure the user to fall into it and truly speaking this time people not only appreciated the interface, they loved it and Ajax added extra gems to it. For the coding part, we had to put various checks in php pages as JavaScript is totally client side script. Ajax really came out to be the solution of most of the problems we faced in 2^nd year. It enhanced the server side response to a great extent. To overcome the rank display at run time, we partitioned the transaction table which resulted in reduced data for each server query.

On the first day of run, few runtime errors occurred but its all part of the game and after that it’s running smoothly. In fact I heard people calling it flawless. Not even people from inside but outside too appreciating the game and even there are corporate people and alumni playing the game. It is really damn heartwarming. As of now the registration count has gone into thousand

and still the game is on …

TEAM $TOCK $UTRA
Infotsav’08
IIIT Gwalior.