PLACEMENT STUDENT - HELP !

[superA]

Hi Guys,

Firstly, its a brilliant website - probably the only thing helping on placement year of my Software Engineering degree. Good Work!

I need some help or suggestions to start with 'one' of my placement year project

I've been asked to develop a ASSET MANAGEMENT PROGRAM for a school - so that staff can order supplies online after logging in which is forwarded to staff in IT department - who check their stocks or otherwise forward it to the Finance Officer with a new purchase order who then sends it back to IT department with either a yes or no.

They want this as a web based application running from the school server so that staff can use it on intranet from their web browser with some sort of status monitor - as in what stages it has reached (ordered, waiting confirmation from IT dept, waiting for yes from finance officer, ordered) so that staff can track it.

I've had a look at JSP based applications - as i did it as a part of my course in 2nd year. But they also want it to be easy to maintain i.e. one package file and no use of SQL! My IT manager's been asking me to have a look at XML based management but i cant get my head around it.


Any idea as to where i can start?

Thanks a TON in advance


superA

[Ric_]

I've been asked to develop a ASSET MANAGEMENT PROGRAM for a school - so that staff can order supplies online after logging in which is forwarded to staff in IT department - who check their stocks or otherwise forward it to the Finance Officer with a new purchase order who then sends it back to IT department with either a yes or no.

They want this as a web based application running from the school server so that staff can use it on intranet from their web browser. They also some sort of status monitor - as in what stages it has reached (ordered, waiting confirmation from IT dept, waiting for yes from finance officer, ordered) so that staff can track it.

I've had a look at JSP based application - as i did it as a part of my course in 2nd year. But they also want it to be easy to maintain i.e. one package file and no use of SQL. My IT manager's been asking me to have a look at XML based managment but i cant get my head around it.

Glad you like the site

First thing I would ask is whether this neesd to be a bespoke (built from scratch) solution. There's some amazing open source projects that could be adapted/extended to fulfill your needs and you would then be contributing back into those projects.

I'd also question not using a DB back end. If you are planning on having multiple users, surely you need a storage mechanism that is designed for access by multiple users - life could become hard for you trying to create temporary files and lock files to make sure that two people don't try to edit the same thing at once.

[tommccann]

Look here it spells it all out in a 3 part tutorial for you : Sample Application: XML Form Generator, Part 1: Generating an XML Form: ASP Alliance

Looks easier than i imagined, send me a pic of the finished product if you dont mind!!

[dhicks]

staff can order supplies online after logging in

What details will they use to log in? You could get your application to check against your school's central Active Directory / LDAP server to check usernames and passwords rather than create yet another login for the teachers.

I've had a look at JSP based applications - as i did it as a part of my course in 2nd year. But they also want it to be easy to maintain i.e. one package file and no use of SQL!

With the Winstone Servlet Container you can pile all your files into one executable JAR file:

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winstone_Servlet_Container]Winstone Servlet Container - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

My IT manager's been asking me to have a look at XML based management but i cant get my head around it.

If you want to use SQL, you could try SQLite:

SQLite Home Page
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQLite]SQLite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Java and SQLite - Stack Overflow

It's an all-in-one SQL "database" engine, desgined to be embedded in applications rather than be a stand-alone server.

If you want to lock files to ensure only one update occurs at a time, Java has support for threads. Google "Java" and "thread", "critical section" or "monitor".

--
David Hicks

[superA]

Hey Guys, Thanks a lot! I'll start working on it this monday and get back to you as i progress.

Thanks again.

[superA]

Glad you like the site

First thing I would ask is whether this neesd to be a bespoke (built from scratch) solution. There's some amazing open source projects that could be adapted/extended to fulfill your needs and you would then be contributing back into those projects.

I'd also question not using a DB back end. If you are planning on having multiple users, surely you need a storage mechanism that is designed for access by multiple users - life could become hard for you trying to create temporary files and lock files to make sure that two people don't try to edit the same thing at once.

Hi Mate,

It's not necessary to be built from scratch, as long as it does what we want it should fine i suppose. What kinda opensource programs could i look at?

Thanks.

[mossj]

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