Shambling Towards Perfection

The goal for sprint 4 is to improve the database access code and the JSPs, as well as move Objects from the Session to the Request. The sprint backlog items are: Priority Description Points 200 Move properties out of the session so that users can do things like have multiple browser windows open and bookmark pages 6 190 Improve database access code so that pages load faster 6 180 Refactor JSPs to use JSTL 8 170 Make all JavaScript and HTML fully standards compliant 8 I essentially split what I had been thinking of for the old "Move properties out of the session so that users can do things like have multiple browser windows open and bookmark pages" item into 2, with the other half being "Improve database access code so that pages load faster". This makes things more clear as to what exactly I intend to do. This is 28 ideal man hours; the next two weeks look less busy for me so I think I've got a good chance at making it this time. And so it goes.

From the lack of updates you can probably guess that I didn't accomplish much this summer. Life got in the way as I had too much else to do. But now the fall semester has started, I'm officially registered for just 3 credits for my Masters project class, meaning I'll be doing another 3 in the spring and graduating in May instead of December, and I'm back at work on the project. I finally started sprint 1 on September 1. So far I've primarily been researching for the "restrict access to the HSQLDB" and "change the way passwords are stored and transmitted" backlog items. After vast amounts of googling I've discovered how to do these things and for the second decided on which methods are needed. I'll be using SSL for just when the user logs in and the bCrypt algorithm as implemented in jBCrypt to hash passwords before storing them. Other than passwords there really isn't any sensitive info in the app; if people didn't reuse pass...

I have finally overcome some technical difficulties, including finding a CS department machine that was actually up so I could retrieve info I needed that had been stored with my original code, and remembering that I had installed 32-bit Eclipse on my machine originally, because 2 years ago when I set it up Eclipse didn't play well with 64-bit Java. The latter resulted in my shiny new 64-bit Java 7 not working with the old version of Eclipse. Getting 64-bit Eclipse in the latest version (Juno) solved that problem. All the technologies, libraries, plug-ins, etc. I need for the project are now fully updated to the latest versions, and I was able to get my project running on my home machine (using Tomcat as the application server). It had been so long since I'd set things up that I'd forgotten how, so I did prove that the instructions I wrote up for my professor to follow worked very well. Go me. I have also been looking more into Java libraries that may help with variou...

I've been working on my Masters degree one class at a time for the last 4 years (working full-time doesn't leave much time for either classes or homework). In May I finally finished up all of the required coursework, so now I just have my project left; that will be the (initial?) focus of this blog, as I created it solely because of the project.  I hope that by documenting my process, design decisions, etc. here, it will serve as a head-start on the required paperwork and documentation for the finished project. The project is called, for now, the Project Management System, and is based off of a project I completed for Advanced Software Engineering in the spring of 2011. It's a web-app using HSQLDB as the database, Java for the data access layer, Java Servlets for the application layer, and JSP/CSS/JavaScript for the presentation layer (to the latter, I intend to add JQuery and JSTL in the near future). A presentation  on my project as it stood at the end of the class is a...