Due Dates 2.0 (the Web Application!) is born

Developing the Due Dates 2.0 web application was an experience that really summed up everything I have learned about software engineering in the last 5 months. I worked alongside Aric West and Mari-Lee Flestado, as team UlaUla (red) in creating this application. In developing Due Dates 2.0 I used all the tools available to me including quality assurance tools, JUnit, configuration management, continuous integration, software ICU statistics, Google Project Hosting, Wicket, and of course Java. Creating the system was to say the least a very rewarding challenge. I think our overall project turned out nicely. DueDates-ulaula Homepage.

screenshot of the login page

NEW FEATURES OF DUE DATES 2.0

The main new feature of Due Dates version 2.o is that is a legit web application, created through Wicket. The other features include a login in page that verifies users from an XML file, a result page that dynamically updates, sorts, and filters your borrowed items, and an alerts page that can schedule email notifications when items are due soon. Its a pretty cool system that is also makes use of CSS, so it looks good to the user. Our group was able to implement all of these features into the system. However, we did not add any extra functionalities to the application.

TEAM DEVELOPMENT

I really enjoyed being a part of a three-person development team. I found that overall, more was getting done with three people always working, rather than just one or two. In the past I've gone weeks without having to do an svn update, but with this project I was constantly updating and committing code. I liked the fact that whenever I went to work on Due Dates, there was usually some new code for me to check out. It was a much more efficient system working together than I've experienced in the past.

Communication was a big plus for our team. We all met a few times a week to do some planning, reporting, and programming. Right off the bat we decided what everyone on the team was going to more or less do, and we got on it. We delegated tasks to everyone through Google project hosting's issue manager. To see what tasks I worked on, view my issue log. One of the main things I enjoyed about working on Due Dates 2.0 was the fact that there were a bunch of different and unique things to do. I personally was excited to work on the CSS styles for the web app, as well as creating the XML configuration manager, since we've never done that sort of thing before. Everyone was able to bring their own skills together for this project and it worked nicely.

When we weren't meeting in person, we were meeting online, talking via instant messages. I did this a lot with the other team members and it worked really well for throwing bugged code back and forth. However, meeting in person was definitely needed for a project like this and it really helped our overall system develop. I remember on the first day we met as a team, Aric had a great idea of planning out exactly what general classes and methods we were going to have so we could all work on things even if something the code relied on was not implemented yet. This worked well when creating the Wicket classes for instance.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

If I could sum up the development process of Due Dates in one word I would say it was 'smooth.' For most of the time spent on development, I did not feel stressed at all. This was partly because I was working regularly, as were my teammates. Since we were committing often, we did not have much that was left to do last minute. 

DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS

The most frustrating and challenging problem I had during the entire development process happened the night before Due Dates 2.0 was set to be finished. I had been working on the overall test suite for the system and I got stuck on testing the ResultPage class which displays a users borrowed items to screen. In testing the class, I was simply trying to update the page with some borrowed items that the test user had. It is a simple test to run manually through the web interface, and it works every time no matter what. However, when running it in a test case, it would never work. The dataview was never created. I consulted my teammates about this, as well as other students and nobody could figure it out. I spent most of my night trying to debug this simple test and wasn't able to figure it out. However, in trying to fix it, I came upon several other possible bugs in the system.

I attribute most of the churn on the last night to this bug, as I re-coded a lot of things in hope that it would fix.

Other than this bug, I didn't run into a lot of problems over the last two weeks. Our group process ran smoothly and we only had minor problems which were fixed quickly. The only thing worth mentioning was the first time I got an update conflict on SVN. This was my first time dealing with a conflict and it really confused me. I didn't know what was what, but eventually I figured it out and it was no problem after that.

SOFTWARE ICU STATISTICS

The overall status of our project reflects in our HackyStat statistics, which are nearly all in the green:

Our development time as a group was consistent, and our commits, builds, and tests were also consistent. Our coverage trend was always going up and we ended with 96% method coverage. The only thing that got messed up was the churn, which was great until the last night (when I was trying to figure out the test bug). However, the overall churn trend is more or less consistently low.

Our development trends were somewhat accurate in representing each members participation.

development time graph

As it shows here, I have the least amount of development time of everyone in the group and Mari has the most. Aric is right in the middle. Everyone seems to have worked nearly every day during this project which is good. What is flawed in this graph is the time spent out of eclipse. This includes working on wikis and for me especially, working in dreamweaver. In addition, when looking at other trends the data seems to change: 

commit data

Here it shows that I have the most commits while Mari has the least. Aric's right there in the middle again. This is true of system builds as well:

build data

Surprisingly though, Aric and Mari ended up with the exact same amount of builds. I thought that was pretty cool.

It was good having the Software ICU monitoring our group process and system health. I can see a real change in how I work on stuff now compared to 5 months ago. I like to work regularly instead of working just a day here and a day there. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

As a software developer I would like to continue creating things in the same way I have with Due Dates 2.0. All the software engineering tools available really aid in creating robust systems. If only I had known about SVN or JUnit before, my code would have been better. Overall, I think creating this web application shows how I have grown as a software engineer. I would not have been able to do such a thing before. Although there are many, many things that can be improved on our version 2.0, I think it turned out quite well for the time we had. I hope to add to it one day.

The Release of Due Dates Version 1.2 [team gold]

This week marks the release of Due Dates version 1.2 [Project Homepage]. With this new version comes two new features: an email reporting service, as well as a timer-based reporting function that allows the user to automatically have the program run at some specified interval of time. Both functions have been integrated into the Team Gold release of Due Dates and everything functions well.

This release also builds upon many fundamental changes to the source code. Classes have been stripped down and simplified. More checks have been added to ensure program robustness and a more exhaustive test suite has been created with well over 90% coverage. Due Dates v1.2 is definitely an upgrade from Due Dates v1.1.

GROUP PROCESS

This weeks development process was much the same as it has been the past few weeks. Although I had time to meet up, Scheller was really busy and so we were only able to meet up a couple times. Otherwise, we communicated via email, IM, or phone. Initially, we talked over program design and test design. We set up a bunch of issues that we thought would be the most useful in modifying the system. This was all good.

However, I found that Scheller and I have two different development styles. I like to get started on things early and he does stuff later. This can be attributed to Schellers heavy workload, but it really is hard to collaborate efficiently like this. Most of the time I felt like I was working alone on the project. I would just keep him updated with what was going on. Scheller did create some good code for the project though. He implemented the self-timer for running Due Dates on a schedule. 

Overall, the development of Due Dates v1.2 could have been better if Scheller and I had worked similarly on the project. Although the state of project meets my initially expectations for the program, things could have been done more efficiently. I would still like to meet up more in person, or at least communicate more on all things relating to the program. Hopefully on the next version of Due Dates, this can happen.

DEVELOPMENT

Development for Due Dates v1.2 went really great for me this week. I attribute this solely to starting early. I did not have to rush on anything the entire week, and I was able to really think out my ideas for the system. I felt like I was ahead most of the time which is not a usual thing for me. I hope to keep up this sort of development style with future developments of Due Dates.

DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS 

The biggest problem we had in the development of this release was trying to get the DueDates.jar file to run correctly. The reason it was so challenging was because the program now uses JavaMail, and referencing these libraries is quite different than most libraries. They must be put directly in the system frameworks rather than referenced in the build classpath. It was especially confusing for me since my computer runs on soylatte 1.6 for its Java JRE, not the usual Java release.

Initially I had a lot of help from other students like Arthur Shum and Ronn Reeves. At one point, Arthur and I did a screen sharing thing through a messenger program called iChat, which allows him to control my computer. That was cool but it did not solve anything. We were copying the mail.jar file to the lib/ext of my Java framework, the right thing to do. However, it was still not working. 

Eventually I realized the only difference between my computer and Arthur's computer was that I was using soylatte. Thus it had to be a problem with that. Then it dawned on me (with the help of Arthur and Ronn). Instead of having the mail.java file in the system framework directory, I needed to put it in the soylatte directory on my system. This simple change fixed it all and the jar file ran fine after that. I was really stumped by this whole problem. I'm really glad it was eventually sorted out.

CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION AND SOFTWARE ICU

The development of Due Dates v1.2 was monitored by HackyStat, a software ICU program reviewed in my last blog post, In the Green With HackyStat. Essentially what this does is monitor all the vital signs of your program as well as monitor the development process. Due Dates had sensors sending data to HackyStat throughout the last week and it was great to visit the project page and see the results of this. It was nice to see current values and trends having to do with things like complexity, coupling, coverage, tests, development time, etc. I usually checked it a few times a day, just to see. I am happy to say Due Dates v1.2 is still all green.

What was cool about all this was that the Hudson continuous integration server ran a daily build that would send sensors back to the HackyStat sensorbase. This meant there was an automated build each day just for the software ICU. It was great to have the Hudson server do this.

FUTURE DUE DATES IDEAS

With Due Dates v1.2 there were a lot of improvements in functionality and there were many improvements in the source code. I am very satisfied with how it turned out. Yet, I know this program can be made even better! Something that will definitely be done in the next version of Due Dates is to create an online application for users to use. This will make it ten-fold easier for the average person to go and use Due Dates. We will be using Wicket to do this. It should turn out really good.

In the GREEN with HackyStat!

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOFTWARE ICU

A software 'Intensive Care Unit' is basically a set of tools for assessing and maintaining project health. It is very much like a hospital's ICU, as it monitors health via vital signs, except that it is monitoring a software project. Of these vital signs, some can give one a very clear idea of how a project is doing. Measures of this type include things like code coverage, complexity, coupling, code issues, and churn. For instance, if a project has bad code coverage, it is invariably lacking in some areas, thus being less 'healthy' than it should be. There are also measures like build counts, unit test counts, project size and development time, which give project health indications. However, with these measures, it is harder to say what is healthy and unhealthy since every project is different. They are there for one to manually interpret and analyze.

What's so interesting about a software ICU is its use in collaborative software. When there are projects being developed by multiple people all at once, its hard to know the current state of a project without manually running tests and doing analysis. When this is done, you then have to share these results with other teammates and that is another task in itself. With a software ICU, daily builds can send vital sign information to a central tool that analyses all the results in an effective way. This way, all project members are able to see the projects current status at any point, from anywhere. Everyone can see how everyone else is working on a project, as well as how consistent code is committed. A software ICU is a valuable tool for doing all of this.

Hackystat, developed by Philip Johnson, is one such tool for measuring a projects overall 'health.' Scheller and I decided to set it up to monitor our Due Dates project, along with the other teams working on their versions of Due Dates.

USING THE HACKYSTAT SYSTEM

Installing and using all the HackyStat sensors was a long, yet essentially easy task. Luckily, with the Due Dates project, Scheller and I were already using JUnit, Emma, CheckStyle, Findbugs, and PMD. This meant we only needed to install a few more tools on our system. These included SCLC, Javancss, and DependencyFinder. The eclipse plug-in worked seamlessly with the IDE. That took no time at all to install. Integrating the Ant sensor was just as easy.

The main problem I ran into was getting the svn sensor to work. When I initially went through the hackystat tutorial, I did not have to set up anything regarding username and passwords since everything was passed through the command line:

ant -Ddefault.account= -Ddefault.password= -Ddefault.sensorbase= -f svn.build.xml

I forgot about this when using it on the Due Dates system so I kept getting errors. Luckily hackystat provides an abundance of user wiki pages to help solve these types of problems. I realized I had to create a UserMap.xml file that held those parameters for me. 

Other than that, I did not run into much trouble installing the system and its sensors. I set up a daily build task on hudson to build the system each day. I was really anxious to see how our system would hold up in the hackystat software ICU.

DUE DATES GOLD CURRENT HEALTH

After setting up everything to send data to the hackystat sensorbase, I was then able to check on the current health of our Due Dates system. I was relatively surprised by the results: 

Project View of Due Dates Gold in Hackystat Browser

All the vital signs are green, meaning our code is healthy. Our coverage is in the 90's and there are no code issues. In addition the complexity, coupling, and churn values are all very reasonable. I was pleased with these results, although there are many areas for health improvement. For one, our system could definitely add some more tests to the test suite. Although our coverage is good, our test case number is fairly low.

As more development goes into the Due Dates project these values are sure to change and there will be more trend history displayed. Hopefully our project will be able to stay in the green. I really think having a software ICU like HackyStat monitor a projects status is extremely valuable. It is a great way to see the overall health and status of a system, thus making it easier to make improvements. Software development on a whole is made more efficient.

The Release of Due Dates Version 1.1 [team gold]

For the last week and a half, my partner Scheller Sanchez and I have been working on Due Dates Version 1.1. This new version has many new features compared to the last one, including support for the Hawaii State Library, a sort option, as well as a within option. All in all what ended up happening to our original code was a lot of redesign, a lot of review, and then even more redesign. Visit the project homepage to check out how it turned out.

VERSION 1.1 DESIGN

A lot has changed in the design department of our Due Dates implementation. Some of the things we initially made for future extension, like the LibraryVault class, we found were obsolete for this version because they were not abstract enough. For this very reason, I redesigned the overall structure a lot, first by putting all the methods for every library in the LibraryVault class, and then by making the LibraryVault class an interface for each separate library to implement from. This, I think turned out to be quite efficient as one can now add libraries easily based on the interface.

Another big change in version 1.1 was the creation of the ItemDue object that holds information about a borrowed item. Using this object, we were able to create an overall List of all the items that were due, allowing the program to sort through them, as well as perform other functions on them.

Also, Due Dates version 1.1 uses the open source ArgParser libraries to parse the command line arguments. These libraries are super useful in specifying command line options and ranges of certain arguments. Using the argparser definitely added to the robustness of the overall system, and it will allow for future additions to the program as well.

TIME CONSTRAINTS WITH VERSION 1.1

Since the release of Due Dates 1.0, I have been loaded with huge amounts of school work. In the last week and a half I not only had two midterms, but two large midterm projects due, not including Due Dates. For me, this was the main thing that slowed progress down on developing the system. I really spent all my extra school time working on Due Dates and it still was not enough.

What I had to do to really get things done was reserve certain days for working on Due Dates, and just work extra hard on it during these times. Although it was not the best system for doing things, it worked out. It was also nice that the system was reviewed twice in this time, helping me to narrow down what the most important things were to do.

COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS AND GROUP PROCESS

Another thing that changed since the last release of Due Dates was communication between our group. It turned out to be much, much harder to meet up in person this week since Scheller and I both had huge amounts of other work to do. By last week wednesday, the original date for the release of the system, he was still unable to help out on Due Dates because he was stuck working on another project. It was hard to collaborate on things because of this.

When we met in person a few times we went over some issues to do as well as some design problems we had to solve. This was good, but it was far from planning everything out. At some point last week I realized I had to just start trying out my new design ideas for Due Dates version 1.1. This was not efficient since I was the only one doing things, and because of this I had to redesign the program a few times over. Things didn't run as smoothly as they did with the release of version 1.0.

Sometimes it took awhile to contact Scheller, but eventually I would get some sort of answer. Luckily we could communicate via instant messages, and luckily we were using configuration management software. It could have been worse. The truth is this version of Due Dates probably could have been better if we had worked more together on it. We did our best for the time period, and I tried my best to release the program up to specifications. I hope for the next release of the program I will be able to meet up with my group a lot more in person. That seems to be the best route for creating collaborative software.

WORKING WITH THE HUDSON SERVER (Continuous Integration)

For the development of version 1.1 we had access to the 'Hudson' server, which is used for the continuous integration of our system. This was, to say the least, really, really, really useful. I could not believe how many times a build would fail on there when I was positive I just checked it on my home machine. On one occasion, I would fix some problems that were found and that would cause even more problems (this had to do with declaring 'private final static' variables and the order of those words). I would commit thinking that everything was a-okay, but the build would fail and hudson let me know each time. Having a back up check using continuous integration is essential.

On the other hand, it was a bit much to always have the system build on Hudson. On many occasions I wanted to commit my code to the server for my partner to look over but the code did not pass verify due to QA errors that popped up. I would always end up spending a long time fixing these errors, when all I wanted to do was commit the code I had so far to show my partner, regardless of the errors. For a while I ended up committing code that would fail the build because of this. That's why we probably still have 'cloudy skies' on hudson.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, working on Due Dates version 1.1 was a lot more of a challenge compared to version 1.0. There were a lot of factors that caused this (time constraints, group process, etc), but I still believe the final outcome turned out great. The program runs nicely now and has all the functionality needed. It is now very extendable too! Developing the next version of the system will be interesting.

Some of the other teams also did great implementations of Due Dates for version 1.1. One worth checking out is Due Dates (Team Silver). I did a review on their system and it is just really awesome. Watch out for the next version of Due Dates coming soon...

Software Review Part Deux

After much time was spent re-working and changing the Due Dates [Team Gold] system to include new standards, Scheller and I were assigned to do a software review on Team Silver's Due Dates program, as well as have our system reviewed by Team Orange. This turned out to be a real eye opening experience for me, as I saw what other groups were capable of and what could be improved on our teams implementation. Since last weeks software review, I didn't really know what to expect since I was reviewing a new groups system.

REVIEW TEAM SILVER

Ronn Reeves and Robin Raqueno were the developers of this Due Dates system and it really was a pleasure reviewing their system. My first impression after viewing just their homepage was WOW. 

I mean look at that page! Compared to what I saw last week in other projects and what my own project homepage looks like, I was blown away. This project was definitely portrayed in an informative and professional way. I loved this. But how did the actual code fair?

After downloading their source code and checking it all out, I was not surprised to see top notch code. Their package structure was organized nicely, as was their class structure. Everything functioned correctly and was done really well. I found their system could really be extended by anyone, even the user. This was because libraries were added through an xml file where the data for each library was held, and this could be updated. I was very impressed by this function. It really was a task to find anything serious to comment on in their code, but I found a few things here and there worth noting.

What was interesting was to see how this team implemented ArgParser, and open source command line parser, since we had also implemented that in our system. Not only did they implement the parser to work for correct arguments like -uhm 12345567 wolff, they made it work for arguments without the library declaration, something more like 12345567 wolff. This was a pretty cool thing I thought, since it would minimize user errors when adding command line arguments.

Overall, doing this review was really nice. It was intriguing to see how a top notch team implemented their system. I think I was able to help as well, if not with their actual code, but with their user/developer guides which were missing a few important things (Their results). In addition to all of this, I got some new ideas for our system.

TEAM ORANGE'S REVIEW ON OUR PROJECT

A review on our Due Dates system was really needed and luckily we had an excellent review team do it - Team Orange, Daniel Tian and Aric West. Our initial review page outlined everything we wanted to have reviewed and they responded to basically everything we asked for and more. I was expecting comments on our class structure, testing and a few other areas, but they found some things I would have never found on my own that were of equal importance. After refactoring our system to have the DueDates name instead of the DueDatesGold name, I forgot that this screwed up jar creation and basic building capabilities. They caught this. There were also some really great comments on the code itself. They gave some great suggestions on some general design issues that needed to be addressed.

I think it is so important to have others try to build and run your system, especially when your dealing with an Open Source Software development project. Many things like jar creation work perfectly on our computers where we've developed everything, but once someone else tries to do these things on another machine, there are errors. Having a review done like this is great for pointing out these errors.

GOOGLE PROJECT HOSTING REVIEW

Doing this review was fairly similar to doing it the last time. Adding comments to peoples code was easily done and check-out was easy. However, I found it much easier to read the comments on our system, as they are all logged on one overall page. Something funny that did happen though was when Daniel Tian did his review and half of his comments appeared on r39, while the others appeared on r40. We couldn't figure it out.

A function I would love google to implement is something that sends you the info about your review that you've done. I have no way of accessing the review I did on Team Silver's system. The only way would be to get a link from them. It could be made easier if that were automated, or if there was a dedicated page for it all.

Overall, this software review was a great experience for me. I sort of got inspired from looking at Team Silvers code, and Team Orange really gave our group some good ideas for improving our system.

Time For Review! Software Review that is...

After working with Scheller Sanchez on the first release of Due Dates, I was ready to take the next step in expanding and enhancing the overall system. Since it is still in the first version, Due Dates is far from being a perfect system. There are many things to improve on and a lot of things to extend the program to. Many times, an efficient way of evaluating everything is by performing a series of reviews on the program, pointing out what does not meet requirements and what design features could be improved.

Doing Reviews

I participated in three reviews - one for duedates-blue, one for duedates-orange, and one for duedates-green. I found this to be a really insightful experience. As Scheller and I designed the structure for duedates-gold, we often wondered how other teams were laying out their system. I personally really wanted to see how far other teams were taking it. By doing these reviews, I got to see just that.

It was really interesting to see how teams structured their systems. To see certain functions - like the program menu function in duedates-blue - actually implemented was extremely useful. I personally had been thinking about implementing that sort of function on our version of Due Dates. Now, I can better judge the use of a program menu in our version. Another thing that intrigued me was seeing how different groups did different things. For instance, one of the groups I reviewed had large amounts of code for parsing the command-line input. Another group had a relatively small amount of code for this, yet surprisingly they did basically the same thing.

For some of the teams I reviewed, it was easier to pick things out to comment on, and for some teams it was a bit harder. Nevertheless, I found some overall problems I'm sure others had found as well. One of these things was Exception handling. Every project I reviewed just showed a stack dump upon exception. This is not good.

Receiving Reviews

The Due Dates - Gold system was reviewed by:

• erinjuneilkim
• creightonokada
• aricwest
• jnancheta
• anthony.m.du
• john.km.zhou

What was cool about all this was that even though Scheller and I specified specific things for each member to look at on our Review.wiki page (documentation, testing, class structure, etc), most of them went out of their way to inspect some of the other code as well. We got a lot of great feedback, good and bad, about our program design and how are program fairs in general. I was surprised to see comments about things I would have totally missed on my own. A good example of this is the command line program requirements. Scheller and I both forgot to integrate the -uhm command in our program but luckily Aric West commented about it.

I am usually really strict about how I program things. However, I do let things slide from time to time and I forget about them. It really is great to get an outsiders perspective on the internals of the program. Having these reviews done on our program can only improve what the future system will become.

Problems with Google Project Hosting's Review Tool

I couldn't believe how many problems I ran into using Google's built in review tool. As a reviewer, my main problem was publishing my so-called 'draft comments.' Half the time there was not a 'publish your comments' link on the page and I was left stuck, wondering what to do. On the first review I did, this occurred and I navigated back a few pages to see what would happen. Somehow by doing this I lost all my draft comments and I had to re-do them. After that instance, when there was no publish link, I realized the only way to fix it was to navigate to different pages until one did pop up. This actually worked well since my comments didn't disappear anymore, but it was a real hassle at first.

I also had big problems trying to see the comments that were left on our source code. This is actually something I'm still trying to figure out! It seems like only some of the comments made actually show up when you browse to the file, and others are left hidden. All six reviewers did post reviews, but they didn't all show up together. When I first looked at the source code, there were only reviews from anthony.m.du, john.km.zhou, and aricwest. In addition, these reviews were sometimes there and sometimes not there. It was really confusing! The way I found the other reviewer's comments was through a link in one of the gmail notifications, of which I only received for two reviews. This link brought me to some other page that listed all the comments on their own. What's better is that aricwest's comments were on both the source code side and the comment page. I have no idea why it does this but I'm just glad I figured out a way to see them all. 

What I learned from it all

After doing reviews, receiving reviews, and dealing with Google's review tools, I can now see the importance of a software review. For the past week I have been trying to think of ways to improve the structure of Due Dates gold. Now I think I have a better idea of what needs to be done. The reviewers of our code really help in creating a better system overall.

Creating My First OSS Project: Due Dates

PROJECT: Due Dates

PROJECT PAGE: http://code.google.com/p/duedates-gold/

TEAM: Tyler Wolff and Scheller Sanchez (team gold)

OVERALL CONCEPT: Due Dates is a program that will go and retrieve information about various items that you (the user) have borrowed, including their due dates. The application can be used for library books, videos, or anything else with a due date, and it can be extended to any source that has an online login. As the tag line states - "Never pay a late fee again!"

project homepage view

THE SYSTEM

For the first version of Due Dates, my partner, Scheller and I decided to implement a system for use with only one library - the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library.  This would enable any UH student to use our application to view what books they have borrowed and which ones are due, thus making it a useful system (Prime directive #1). We decided to do this with the addition of some extendible features to expand the functionality in the future. For this stage of our program, it would include these classes.

• LibraryVault - an object to hold information about a given online library system. Object holds the site URL, the login form's name, and the two parameter names within form.
• DueDatesGold - this is the main class that uses LibraryVault objects in conjunction with user defined id/passwords (or any type of login information) to gather information about borrowed books and their due dates.

This initial structure, however simple, would give great functionality into accessing UH Manoa's library system, as well as allow for some future program expansion. The way we see it, since there is a LibraryVault object, many libraries can be set up initially from outside sources, like a file or even a database. Because of this, methods like the login method can then be used for multiple library systems, thus abstracting the code a little more.

However, because our first version of Due Dates only deals with the UH Manoa Library system, the overall code is not simplified that much.  In addition the program works through the use of command-line arguments (the UH student's ID and last name). This means, it runs from a terminal with no interface capabilities. The output is just as informative though, and it can be run very simple through the use of a jar file. Anyone can download and use it (Prime Directive #2):

Sample Program Output

GROUP PROCESS

Sheller and I decided early on that we would communicate everyday about the project, whether it be in person or through the use of an instant messaging program. What ended up happening was that during the last week, we met up almost every other day in person for a couple hours, to talk about the program and work things out. This was definitely to our advantage and it worked well for both of us.

At our initial meetings we planned out the system while issuing specific tasks to each other on the project page. We even met once in Hamilton Library so we could borrow some books (for program testing!). In some of our later meetings we programmed together or edited existing files. What I found interesting was how much can get done while working together. We set up the project page instantly and put up issues just as fast. Its much easier to program as well because you can physically show the other person your code without having to send them the file. A big initial problem we had was getting Eclipse to recognize the HttpUnit classes. We worked together trying to fix it and finally found a temporary solution to the problem. This was later resolved in class.

Something that we did not do a lot at our meetings was commit files to the project repository. I don't know if this was because we never got to a final stage with our code or because we just never thought about it, but it probably would have been more efficient to commit/update code right then and there.  Overall though, it was really nice working with Scheller on this project. We both did what we planned to do and everything ran smoothly. 

SETTING UP THE PROJECT

Hosting the Due Dates project on Google Code was really great. It allowed for really easy collaboration between Scheller and I. Creating a public project page for Due Dates was something I really enjoyed. It is sort of like marketing it as a product and making it accessible to everyone (Prime Directives #2,#3). I gained some experience making a wiki page for Developers to build and modify the project. Since the project does have external dependencies like HttpUnit, I had to create informative instructions for installing and using those tools. I used lots of screen captures and descriptions to explain it all.

The issues log was a great function of google projects that I did not previously know about. After adding issues to the list, Scheller and I were able to go through each of our specific tasks, noting when they were completed. It is like a complex to-do list that really makes it easier to reach project goals as a group.

TESTING THE SYSTEM

Testing for the Due Dates system was a little different than past tests I have done. I personally was responsible for testing the login method and the method that gathered data from the UH Manoa library. I tested for correct login information, as well as incorrect login information. For the due date information, I made test cases with users who had no books borrowed and with users who did have borrowed books. I made sure content was correct and exceptions were caught. 

It was interesting building a test suite from the ground up as I have never done that before. I've only ever added to other test classes. The things we were not able to test for were external dependencies like internet connection, internet errors, etc. This could be done in the future though.

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

One of the coolest things about the Due Dates program is its extendable capabilities. Scheller and I talked about this a lot since there is so much that could be done to enhance the system. For one the system could employ a better command-line system as well as support multiple libraries. It would be really cool too if a user was able to add their own libraries without extra coding on the programmers side. In addition, some sort of graphical interface would be great. It would make the program look even better.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the building of this project as a group was a eye opening experience. I have never really done this sort of thing programming before and it really showed me the possibilities of open source software development. If many people were all working on this project at the same time, who knows how great the program could become. And it is all done so easily with Google Project Hosting and subversion technology. Hopefully in the future this project can really expand and develop.