Week 7

What I Did

Research - I did some light reading on my topic area. So far all my research has been through general Internet resources available to the public. I know the university offers access to an online library that has links to many other electronic libraries and university resources however I have yet to venture into that ever consuming void of available information.

So this week one of my endeavors will be to set up my Athens account and find some academic resources that will support my ideas for my middleware component.

I pondered ways to organize my research but so far I have only come up with a table structure that is in my view minimal and not sufficient. I think it will take of time to constantly record all the links and books that I use and at the end I will have a record but it will be in random order and still require a lot of work to become a list of a standard bibliography necessary for the project proposal.


According to the Lecture

At the moment we should have the following ;

• A clear understanding of the project idea
• Finished the project proposal
• Have people resources and interviews if necessary
• Risk Assessment
  
• Mini Literature Review
  

Now I have most of the above. I understand my project and the topic area better than when I first came up with the title and I feel more comfortable with the technologies I may be working with. None of them are set in stone... I still have time to review varying options and make an evaluation. (Different languages and platforms).

However I have a problem;

I think i am now understanding the depth and necessity of the Mini Literature Review and the part it plays in the next submission (Literature Review).
Mine was poorly organized and my research served only to enlighten me on the topic area and the project in general. I now have to embark on the very same trip completed and collect references and supporting documentation for the Literature Review.

I fear that will not be able to find some of the reading that I would have like to include as part of the literature review.


What I Plan to Do

I definitely have to think deeply and come up with a suitable and relevant way of documenting resources.

Lessons Learned

The literature review aims to -
Show the examiner that the student has read extensively on the topic area and have gathered awareness on the state of research for that particular topic area.

Critical Evaluation -
Critical evaluation is the foundation of the literature review. The paper is assessed based on how well the student is able to read and interpret different points of view from different authors.

Your Own Ideas -
The examiners are looking for new ideas. What the student thinks that is not published. This is a touchy situation. A student may think that their idea is new only because they have not done enough research or their research was not targeted properly to return corresponding results.
This is cause for concern - wording should be done carefully and tactfully to avoid giving false information.

Week 6

What's Left to Do

The thing i am most concerned about is the references. I am not sure i can find all the things i have read so far. To get an idea of the technological environment surrounded my topic area i just randomly searched the keywords i compiled.


So withstanding the loss of some documentation... I have an article that is very promising. I will only mention it here since I need only have the reference and i will revisit it in detail and enthusiasm after the proposal is safely in the hands of the SBCS Greenwich Dept.

Inspiration - "Breaking Network Logjams" by Effros Keotter and Medard.

Why I Did It

Since I was so daft as to read without keeping track of what or how i was going about gathering information; I resorted to looking thorough the historys on three computers that i used to do my searches.

This was a pain staking process which resulted in the following;

google: Struts2 generates soap

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/oreilly/windows/news/soapreview_0600.html

IBM Soap vs Microsoft Soft



how companies use web services

6. http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp3011%2F32p11%2F32p11.asp
7. http://www.strikeiron.com/ProductDetail.aspx?p=388
9. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480496.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms951268.aspx



http://www.amazon.com/Success-Stories-AWS-home-page/b?ie=UTF8&node=182241011&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA



TECH RESOURCES

Online Learning
http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/category/technology/junit/


google
creating a dtd for a database
4
http://doesen8.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/webdb/wien/015.pdf

5
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/05/09/dtdtodbs.html

7
http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/schema/database.dtd.html

http://db.apache.org/ojb/
http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/ant/
http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/api-usage.html


scholar.google
where can a DTD be used - page 2 results
18
http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~alfw/publications/experience_wang99.pdf


Lessons Learned

Last minute is bad.
Organization is good.

The is a hoard of technology surrounding this topic area. I am going to have to take my time and sift though what I want to use and what I should use verses what is nice to use. I feel rather overwhelmed after all this reading. A little more enlightened about REST and SOAP and some implementations; but all the same I dont feel as enlightened as I should be. More reading is in order but I think I need to rest first. (Little Joke).

So until next week. The proposal is printed in duplicate and handed in.

The Journey Continues.

What I Plan to do

• Rest (not REST)
  
• Try and find a way to organize my research
• Do some more research
  
• Find some direction as to the next hand up - which will most likely come with the lecture this Friday (29th Aug)

Week 5

One Week to go before the proposal submission date.

What I Did

The Outline for the task list (WBS) look like ; - Initiating & Planning - Research & Analysis - Design & Test Phase 1 - Design & Test Phase 2 - Design & Test Phase 3 - Final Testing & Documentation The phases are there and again I have the general ideas in my head however organizing them into something resembling methodological steps is going to be a formidable task. I like software. No I love software. And I have an Idea of how building a piece of software should progress(OR rather how I would like it to progress). That is a start, not neglecting that this project entails mass planning and documentation. Documentation is no always my cup of tea but it is necessary here so I must make adequate provisions. I put the first constraint on myself for this project.

The documentation and reporting for this project must be as strong as or better than the design and code that succeed it.

So my thinking for filling in the tasks follows the pattern below;



After outlining the sub phases and coming up with tasks for the WBS I tacked the relavence of other courses. I tried my best to make the short paragraphs represent my individual take on what each subject matter meant to me and at the same time be professional and show how i would use them for the final project.

Honestly each course we did was bordered by thin lines of how technology actually exists in the real world environment. They are very interconnected especially in the scope of this degree and in my case the final project.

Why I Did It

One week left before submission. I am not counting next week. I hope to be finished by this weekend - 23rd through the 24th so that Monday I can work on getting folders for submission and printing.

I want to try my utmost to manage time in this project. Since it has a fixed deadline and I see the outcome as a all or nothing scenario. This is based on the fact that if the submitted software does not model all the requirements outlined in the proposal the system is seen as incomplete and is not successful and is marked as such.

My project must be successful. More than the complexities of the code / frameworks and technology involved I know my biggest challenge other than time management is my shortcomings where documentation is concerned. Like the proposal and the literature review. I don't doubt my ability to produce good work but I know it will take me more than 15 hours a week.


Lessons Learned

I always like the idea of being a couple days ahead. Depending on the assignment / target sometimes a couple weeks if i can manage it. A month makes me most comfortable.

However with this final project I am not daring to assume too much of myself. I think i can manage a few days ahead and that is still left to be seen.

I realized out of the Relevance of other courses that I wrote; how very complete the Greenwich program is made up. I am very proud to belong to such an establishment.

Nothing goes as planned. I still did not gather my references. I know what i read but I cannot necessarily find everything. I need to find a way to organize my reading material; especially the online references which make up the bulk of my resources.

Note: I use many text books but they are easily referenced.

What I Plan to Do

1. Refine WBS (after lecturer's input)
   
2. Compile References
3. Put entire proposal together
4. Look at ways to organize references
   

Week 4

What I Did

Detailed the Project Proposal

• Worked on the details of each objective (these are my objectives);
  
  
  • To research literature on the area of Web Services specifically in relation to CMS for tertiary education institutions.
    
    
  • To investigate a suitable methodology that will identify with the social needs specific to the business environment thereby producing requirements that support the stakeholder interests and vision for the resulting system.
    

  • To examine the tertiary educational facility and determine how a revolutionary model using web services would be established.

  • To develop a sound data schema representing the Meta Data of the primary data stores in a design usable by the web service to determine favourable search results.
    
    
  • To replicate an instance of the existing MIS environ by designing a module that will be used to determine the design specifications
    
    
  • To design the middleware and portal solution
    
    
  • To test a working prototype of the system modules and then integrate them
  
  

• Developed Risks - these were the things on my mind;
  
  
  1. Research on Risks in a software development environment
     
     
     • What kind of risks apply?
     • How much detail does this risk assesment need?
     • How many pages should it be?
     • What information about the risk is relavent?
     
     
  2. Compile some main points
     

• Came up with Critical Success Factors

1. Time Management – each phase to occur in planned time slots.

2. Ability to access published & documented material respective to the study area – Message Oriented Middleware utilizing RESTful Web Services.

3. Support and participation of school officials in approval and continuous support throughout the life of the project.

4. Manage the scope of the project to meet realistic and feasible objectives.

5. Adaptive risk management – the ability to anticipate and plan for changing risk potentials as the project phases succeed each other to the end.

6. Designing a strong DTD Schema for the middleware to base its decisions upon.

7. Guidance from the technical staff involved in the daily procedures of the existing MIS.

8. Rigorous testing to minimize bugs and rework at later phases.

9. Maintenance of the project diary

How I Did It

• A lecturer sent the entire project class a link on risk
  
  I read the document and still had trouble getting my risks on paper. I could think of many things that would go wrong but I was still not clear on if they qualified as an actual 'risk'.
  
  So I decided to go back to the last place I met "Risk" - This was a couple terms ago in ITPQM. I did a pretty decent risk assessment for the CW in that term so maybe if I look over some of the documentation I can remember how i went about doing a risk assesment then and use the steps to come up with some risks for the final project.
  
  
  

• The critical success factors came quite naturally after I FINALLY got some risks on paper.
  

Why I Did It

• I used a picture ... very close to a Concept Map to draw out my ideas for risks. The idea was brought forward in the DIS (Distributed Information Systems) class the previous saturday. I usually dont like drawings of any kind (I cannot, draw, paint, sketch; all my efforts look horrible). But when the lecturer explained the use of Mind Maps and Concept Mapping I thought the purpose fit the situation... where i could not get the ideas out of my head... so I tried it.
  The outcome was far from perfect but now I have some risks to work with.
  

Lessons Learned

A picture is worth a thousand .... pixels .... ideas ...

A simple answer is not a wrong answer. I struggled with the risks so much because I thought the simple ideas I had were wrong.

Just because this is a technical project does not mean every bitty part of it is complex.

What I Plan to Do

1. WBS
2. Relevance of other courses
   
3. Compile References
4. Start putting the entire proposal together