Fall 2007

Things accomplished this week:
1.) Installed VS on my desktop.
2.) Attended first meeting, where the basics of web services and web applications was discussed. Agreed on two web method signatures to be shared, here Good that you posted a link to the info, bad that the info is buried in the middle of a discussion.  Formalize your decisions.  -- SW
3.) Made a simple web service that sends simple SQL requests to a remote web server to make myself more familiar with VS, C#, and the web service creation process.  Can you share this example with others so that they can benefit too? -- SW

On the warm-up project we've made the following, rather substantial gains:

 

 - a majority of the class (and hopefully everyone who came Thursday night), understands the Web Service model (And what are you basing this conclusion on?  People nodding their heads is rarely correlated with actually understanding what is going on.  -- SW), a little bit of how we'll structure our apps (user interacting with a Web App, interacting with a Web Service, which will communicate with other Web Services). Hopefully everyone will be able to figure out how to begin on the project, and where to go for help.  Are you willing to bet your project on "hope"?  Or are there concrete things you can do to insure that everyone will get started and progress reasonably?  -- SW

 

- We decided on a standard for the method signature's for our Web Service, which provides a minimal baseline for interoperability

 

So far I have
1. Installed VS 2005 on my laptop
2. Read some documents about C# and Web Service
I mainly refer to two websites: MSDN and CodeProject
http://msdn.microsoft.com/
http://www.codeproject.com/cs/webservices/

If you find useful resources, you should post them (in the Comp410 Resources site is a good place) and let others know about them. -- SW
Thanks for posting links --Barnaby
3. Attended meeting on Thursday night
Thursday's meeting, especially the tutorial about web service helps me a lot in understanding web services and web application. 

I was able to create a new web service and an ASP.NET web application using VS. Did you follow a tutorial?  What levels of functionality were you able to acheive?   -- SW As of now, I haven't yet implemented anything concrete. This sounds like a contradiction with your last sentence.  -- SW  I came to our group meeting a little bit late so I was a bit lost, but overall the meeting proved to be helpful. I have gained a general idea of what we need to do in the warm up project.   And what exactly was that general idea that you got?   Be specific.   What you got out of the meeting may be completely different from what someone else got.  -- SW

-Installed Visual Studio
-Attended the first group meeting
-At said meeting we were able to nail down some standardization on the interface, which can be seen here. Is this really a good place for this info?  What else was accomplished at this meeting or was that all?  Be specific and complete. -- SW
-Messed around with Visual Studio, got acquainted with C# and Visual Studio as well - making one or two easy programs (Hello World, for example)
-Planned the date of the next meeting  Which is when?  Be complete.  -- SW

Got Visual Studio installed on my computer.
Attended the Thursday meeting and got an idea of what this web service is supposed to be and how it should interact with others' web services.

We have definitely made progress in understanding the Web Services model of VS. Brad was more than helpful with this part of our project.

We've also set reasonable early deadlines for prototypes so we can begin testing interconnectivity. We hope that everyone will have a reasonably complete back end and some sort of ASPX page to test it with by the time of our next meeting (monday). What happens if this isn't the case? --Barnaby

I have installed Visual Studio and create a web service project and played around with it slightly (although no real work was done.) MSDN help files are still not installed since a CD was missing from the pack we got, but that will be fixed later. (Actually, the on-line reference from MSDN is better than the installed version b/c it is more up-to-date. -- SW)  The class had a meeting together and standardized the basic signature that we will use, and have decided on setting up a milestone next Monday to get the basic search function working, including networking. Also, general items and concepts have been discussed, so hopefully most people should be nearly on the same page for the project, although of course experience varies greatly.

Kevin Le and I spent some time Monday night working out how to create the project and get started on Web Services. I've also read some online tutorials/books for how to use C# classes and syntax (Could these benefit the others? How can they find these texts? --Barnaby), specifically File I/O for the file searching function This sounds important. Do the others know about what you've found out? --Barnaby.

-Installed Visual Studio (minus the MSDN Library) onto my computer

-Attended the meeting where we ironed out some of the details of the methods for the web service

I was able to get Visual Studio installed without any problems, once I got the discs. We were able to plan out the standard interface of our web services, and go over the basic functionality of the web service and web application.

So far, I've installed VS and successfully created a simple Hello World web service. I also attended a meeting where we discussed the nature of web services and established an initial standard for our warmup project Where is this standard documented? Link please. --Barnaby.

Problems:
1.) Could not properly test my practice web service due to lack of IIS.

 

 

2.) Needed to prevent infinitely looping requests from occurring.  
3.) Needed to determine how best to relay the file back to the original requester.
4.) Probably the biggest issue is my lack of experience with VS, C#, and web applications which is made more pressing by the looming deadline of our first project.

Organizing and communicating are a significant challenge among a group of our size. (Expect this to be the #1 problem this semester!  -- SW) So far this hasn't been an extremely challening issue, except for a few miscues, such as failing to put some details on the discussion board at first.

 

Lack of experience is our biggest obstacle so far, but I hope that will just be rectified soon as we all get going on working.

The main problem is I do not have any experience in C# nor web service. Besides, I have little experience of using Visual Studio, so it takes time to get familiar with it.
Another problem is I cannot test my file. I installed IIS but it still doesn't work. Several errors are reported, including "Failed to access IIS metabase " and "Server application unavailable". I am still working on this problem.
-----This problem is solved now. I simply restarted the computer and it works.

I am still unclear about the specifics of some things (Vague.  Be specific as to exactly what you are not clear about. It is unlikely that you are the only one unclear on the issues.-- SW) but I think I will be able to figure it out over the weekend. Google proved to be a good resource. I am a visual person so I like having examples and concrete things rather than talk about things abstractly. One problem I have is speaking up in meetings, especially when I am unclear on certain concepts.

-On Thursday I was privy to learn that my motherboard is dying. My desktop comp will only start up successfully every now and then.
-We need to find a way not to go into infinite loops when searching other servers How did you create a search query standard without having this consideration?  -- SW
-I do NOT know how to use Visual Studio or C# right off the bat
-We need to meet again as a group.  Why?  Be specific!  -- SW

 

Unfamiliarity with both Visual Studio and Sharepoint is slowing initial progress, that's something I'll get around eventually

Although we haven't really run into any obstacles yet because we theoretically have our design done, I'm worried that we're going to meet on Monday and realize that we forgot more than we expected. You will probably be surprised at how accurate this insight is. Relying on people to remember everything is very similar to the game of telephone. And it gets worse as more time passes. --Barnaby

None as of yet, besides inexperience in network programming and a missing MSDN CD.

 

I'm having a bit of trouble since I don't have an environment to test on. My home PC is XP Home and my laptop is Vista Home Premium, so I can't install IIS. Since I've never worked with Web Services, it would be helpful to incrementally try it out as I make changes.

 

 

 

-Missing the final disk for the MSDN Library so was unable to install that.  See my comments in Derek's journal on how to get around this.  --SW

-Didn't meet until late so was unable to actually begin coding, as the meeting was late Thursday and I had no time today.   Why didn't you start earlier than Thursday on getting up to speed on VS/C#?   -- SW

 

 

I was not able to get Visual Studio installed until Thursday. Several other people were installing on thursday as well. Because of this, I was not able to test anything in Visual Studio before our meeting. Although we were still concentrating on design rather than coding, it would have been helpful to be able to examine some of the design ideas in Visual Studio to see if they were possible or not (Interesting idea. How can this be done effectively? --Barnaby). Also, I could have asked better questions about the web service during the meeting if I had already tried to set one up (Good job recognizing a cause of silence. --Barnaby).

Installing VS was much more of a pain for me than I was expecting, though I doubt many other people will have the same problems. I have a fairly complex setup, using a Macbook Pro with Boot Camp to run Vista, but also using Parallels to run the same Vista installation in a virtual machine when in OS X. The biggest problem was that I didn't make the partition big enough, so when I went to install SP1 for VS, I ran out of disk space on drive C. Fortunately, I avoided having to completely reinstall Vista by clearing out some of the other programs I'd installed. VS also apparently needs an additional patch that's installed after SP1 to run on Vista.

(I guess another problem I encountered was not remembering to turn in this journal until I woke up Saturday morning, but I think once I get in the habit, it'll be easy. Plus, I've told my computer to remind me to turn it in...)

1.) I will obtain a Windows XP Pro CD over the weekend to install IIS on my machine so that testing is possible.
2.) Decided on tagging a file request with a GUID so that a machine can recognize whether or not it has seen a file request before.  The documentation on the class's standard for the web service does not detail this issue at all.   How can you insure that everyone is on the same page about it?  -- SW
3.) Decided on sending a direct link to the file back to the original requester. This, of course, depends on the file being in a publicly accessible location, which is an assumption we made.

Do the specs say that you can have such publicly accessible file locations?   Or do you need to provide a mechanism through the web service to get the file?   -- SW 
4.) Seeing as web services and applications will probably also play a major role in our big project this semester, I will continue to work on practice web services and applications to gain more experience with VS and C#.   A bit vague.   You don't have time to simply write on generic example after another for practice.   Focus on the issues at hand and concentrate your practice work on attaining those goals.  -- SW

The things we've been doing to work together and share knowledge seem to be working reasonably well. We need to work on improving and fostering an environment where people can easily ask for help from those with knowledge.  Good point! -- SW

 

I hope that a lot of the current issues will work themselves out as we get going (The problem with "hoping things will work themselves out" is if it doesn't work, by the time you find out, it will be too late. -- SW) (of course they'll just be replaced with new issues You've been talking with ex-COMP 410'ers! :-)  -SW).

Continue reading online tutorial and build small projects to get familiar with VS.   (Do you really have time to just work on random examples, or do you need to be more directed in your study? Part of the problem here is a failure to adequately and completely define what the problem is that you are working on.  Exactly what aspects of C#/VS do you need to learn about right away?  -- SW)  I will read more article about C# libraries and methods, see some examples of the web services and try to build my project. I start working on the simple methods of web service and interface of web client now.
Use Google search to find the solution. If the IIS still have problems, ask others for help.

I think that I need to be eager to let people know when I need help or when I am stuck. I always assume that students in the class have no problem with what I may be having trouble with (Statistically, highly unlikely.  And even worse, those who think they know very well may not understand it as much as they think they do. Always speak up because it benefits everyone.-- SW)  and so I do not want to waste group time asking trivial questions. It may (will!) help for me to be more vocal in group meetings in the future.

-I'm leaving my computer on until I get the parts necessary to fix it.
-We decided to tag requests with GUID so as to identify if a request has been seen before. There might be an elegant way of doing it using some graph theory - I'll check out a book this weekend and see (though I don't know how much time I'll spend on it, probably not much since GUIDs seem to work just fine).   How do you know if they are "working just fine" if you haven't tested them yet? -- SW
-Well, I suppose this project will help me get accustomed with it. C# seems to be a lot like Java so I don't feel so out of it right now (Be careful of the small differences. *cough* Delegates *cough* --Barnaby). At the same time, I'm going to make heavy use of the contacts list if need be.
-Meet again Monday at 9PM  (When?)

It's time for me to start experimenting with Visual Studio and using Sharepoint a little more.

We'll have to wait until Monday to see (Oh, trial and error. While it can lead you to the right answer, will you have time for it when the real project begins? --Barnaby), although I hope we all brainstorm during the weekend while we work on our individual parts

Get the last CD key and begin to work on the project. I will be working with another person in the class, so together we can test our program inter-compatibility and help each other with confusing parts.

I've got the CD to install XP Professional on my PC, but I'd prefer to not upgrade my OS if I can help it. I'm going to try using the machines in Symonds this weekend.

-Ask, through IM first, fellow members if anyone has the last disk. If unable to personally contact anyone, send an email through the listserve to the whole group.

-Meet sooner in the week and be more prepared for the meeting, s we will be meeting Monday and have asked for everone to have a basic implementation by then.

Next time I would like to try to arrange a better schedule for passing around the software and getting it installed for everyone, if we have limited copies again. At least for Visual Studio, this was only a one time occurence, so now that it is installed it won't be a problem for the main project.

I think that all of my problems in setting up my IDE have been solved. The next step is to get started with the actual development, but since I haven't started, I don't really have any problems there. I don't feel behind schedule not having any code yet; I'll work on it this weekend and have questions/answers when we meet on Monday.

The people with experience and knowledge of the relevant processes in our project are stepping up in vocal roles and engaging in active discussion.   Vague.  Who are these people?  -- SW

I think the team has been reasonably organized with regards to meeting together and incorporating different ideas about how things should be implemented, and having foresight about what choices now will give us the most extensibility (although that remains to be seen).

 

 

I especially like the way Matt and Aaron have contributed experience.

In the meeting we discussed the algorithm to avoid loop and method signatures to do the search. It's a great progress for the whole group.
The basic knowledge taught in the meeting are also useful for the beginners.

We seem to all have a basic understanding of the project and what we need to do by our next meeting. People are willing to help each other out and share the knowledge they have (Is there an easy way to share this knowledge so that others know where to find it? --Barnaby). Also it seems that we are able to have constructive discussions on what we want to do, the pros and cons of approaches that we want to take, etc.  Be specific.  Give some examples of what you are talking about.  -- SW

As a group, I think we've clearly identified who the experts among us are in terms of this project (And those people and their areas of expertise are...?? Be specific!-- SW), and we've gotten our method signatures nailed down more or less (at least how our services should be structured).  (What about the semantics and usage of those methods?  -- SW)  And while this weekend will be still rife with some trial and error, I think we'll have a good bearing as to what works and what doesn't for this project. Having a standard interface nailed down, I think we'll be okay for this weekend, but as to how much we have to do to finish the project will be hard to say until Monday.

The group meetings seem to be productive, we seem to have several people who consistently have ideas to share (Who?  Give them credit! -- SW)
I feel like the discussion board on Sharepoint will be useful outside of meetings, for troubleshooting and giving advice

The meeting went very well, especially since we all don't know everyone and it's hard to speak up in front of 15 of your peers (Is there any way to make it easier? --Barnaby). We need to continue having meetings like that and I thought it was good that Brad took charge. Either him or someone else needs to keep doing that for meetings to continue running smoothly.

So far its tough to tell whats working and what is not working. So far things seem to be going smoothly over all, but Monday will determine this. The meeting seemed to go quite well and was informative.

Visual Studio is nice for doing all the work, after a slight learning curve on the Web Services. Unfortunately without a testing environment I can't figure out if the code I've written so far actually works properly.

 

 

We seem to have ironed out a few details of what we need so that each of us may begin coding our portions. A few people who seemed to know the topic beter than the rest were able to explain to us a bit more of what it is we are doing and as a group we could decide on some key issues.

We were able to begin making decisions, arrange meetings, and start working as a group to figure out the standard part of the project which will be shared among all our designs. We were able to get over the hurdle of not having any momentum, get some talk going, and accomplish our initial goals.

I think that our initial meeting went well. Brad gave a good overview of web services, and we ironed out what seems to be a fairly robust standard. I was pleased that we not only came up with a design during the meeting but were able to refine it into something simpler. We initially were going to pass an XML blob as the search parameter, and then we'd parse it to find the information we wanted. We then realized that we could use the Dictionary class to do the same thing for us, since we're actually only wanting to pass a set of key/value pairs.

Many people didn't say a word throughout the entire meeting we held. This probably stems not only from lack of experience in .NET, but also in their willingness to let others dominate the discussion.   Don't forget confidence issues.   Many people are afraid of speaking up because they "don't want to be wrong".  But in a room full of people who don't know what they are doing, are there any wrong things to be said?   -- SW

We've not been terribly good at keeping the Sharepoint site completely updated and providing good resources for common usage.   True.  This can be a real killer.  -- SW

 

I'm exceedingly worried about the amount of time that will be required to correct errors in our archecture and common design. We absolutely have to have made the right decisions, as it could take days to get everyone on board with any change, and we've only got precious few of those left. It's an entirely different ballgame than a single-developer or even a small group. Whereas if it was just my piece, if I needed to change the method signature for the web service, that could be done in a couple of hours at most. In our case it'll be so much longer. I just worry we'll run into a titanic type of situation: see the obstacle only after it's too late to turn out of the way.

 

Many people (include me) lack of experience of C# and .NET, so there are little chance for them to participate in the discussion.

It is yet too early for me to see any major issues or problems in terms of development process. I would imagine that we will have a lot in the coming week as people make progress in their projects.

As of now, the only thing that comes to mind is the way that the design process was done by maybe 3 or 4 people for the initial meeting. Now this may not seem so bad, but for 9 to 10 other people in the room not to chime in doesn't seem to bode well.

 

I admit that for myself, I had gotten in early so I was mostly paying attention and trying to better gain an understanding as to where we were in the design process exactly, and beyond that the actual nature of the assignment was still puzzling to me (or at the very least I have not worked with web services before).

Oh, and also, maybe next time we should have some sort of scribe for the meetings. That would be very helpful later for documentation and remembering what was discussed/decided in meetings.

Nothing seems to be not working at the moment, but problems are sure to crop up sooner or later

 

It seems to me that only a few people are contributing to the thought process and that others seem more lost that I'd hope. Hopefully their lack of questions means that they know what's going on (You're more of an optimist than I'll ever be. --Barnaby) or we may have some major problems come Monday.

As of yet there are no visible problems, but Monday will determine this more than anything. If anything might be problematic its the low frequency of meetings (How is this problematic? If you don't let others know your misgivings as to how the class is handled, how can things get better? Don't be afraid to debate points that really matter. --Barnaby), although, once again, there is no way to tell as of yet.

I don't really know what isn't working yet (besides running a Web Service on my computer). This is my fault for not trying to get this taken care of sooner.

We waited to meet until too late, and so I have no working code as of yet.

We still have some people who aren't talking much yet. Our discussion process is a little disorganized, but at least it was on task.

While the discussion was very professional, and (from what I could tell) no one was ever even slightly annoyed with anyone else, a few people dominated the discussion. Some people didn't say anything all night, except when we went around the room to introduce ourselves. I think that a great deal of this might be that they didn't know C#, ASP.NET, or web services, and perhaps felt they didn't know what to contribute.

If people are to become valuable members of the team, they have to voice their opinions and questions. In such a close environment, with so few people, it is important that everyone's voice is heard. No one can afford to be in the background.  Good point!  -- SW

None yet, but probably will be coming soon perhaps.

 

I think as we are getting familiar with everything, this situation may change.   This is not a proposal for change.  This is merely hoping and praying things will get better on their own.   Be pro-active and make things happen.  -- SW
And we may hold small group meetings before the whole group discussion to ensure everybody understand the basic knowledge and what is going on.

This is a much more concrete suggestion.  But hold small group meetings on what?  -- SW
I think we can post our problems on the discussion board. Of create a list of issues to deal with.   Good suggestion. -- SW

I think active discussion and interaction with other students in the class will help a lot and save many people's time as the project develops.   True, but what concrete suggestions do you have to help promote this active discussion and interaction?   -- SW

 

Right now, it's hard to say that there is a need for change, though to be fair there's not much evidence one way or the other. Brad and Derek, among a few others really seem to know a lot more about web services and peer-to-peer services than at least I do, and I get the feeling that many more were in the same boat with me.

The current plan is to get a good skeleton up and running and possibly be able to test it by Monday.

 However, I know that I am going to keep the contacts page up as much as possible and call people if I get confused (which I'm almost certain will come up). I encourage anyone reading this entry to do the same, and at the very least even if we don't get some issues sorted out until we meet as a group again, we can encourage more communication with each other.

Good point! - SW

On the last bit...well, we should assign some one to be a scribe for the meetings.

I'm sure some things will need to change as we begin to encounter problems

I think we have to make a conscious effort to try to get everyone to contribute, maybe asking questions. I don't want to sound like a teacher (If someone is sharing knowledge with others, doesn't that mean you're assuming the role of teacher anyways? --Barnaby) but it's the only way we can be sure that we're all on the same page -- which is crucial to not only this project but the big one later on

As of now I have no proposals for change besides possibly having more meetings, although this may not actually be useful.

See above -- I haven't gotten been able to run any of my code so I don't know what works and what doesn't, and how to change the things that don't work. Hopefully I'll be able to get a lot more work done this 3 day weekend and catch up to everyone else who have been experimenting already.

Although a few people have stepped up, most of the group has remained mostly silent. We all need to speak up more and be more active. This includes being more prepared for meetings: knowing what is going on, what issues there are, and research/think of possible solutions. Another very important thing is to know what problems each of us is hving, so that we can ask for help rather than just tring to figure it out ourselves. Everyone needs to spak, no one can be silent.

We should create agendas for meetings. When we are able to define some roles for the main project, and split up into more specific teams, I think that will help give everyone a chance to contribute. It's hard to have 16 people decide together on one interface, so it ends up being about 3 or 4 doing most of the talking.

I think the way to get more people to contribute is to ramp everyone up as fast as possible on the material. Hopefully, when we meet on Monday, everyone will be much more knowledgeable.

Several people have been stepping up: Matt, Aaron, and Felipe come to mind although there are others.   :-)

 

I was a little disappointed that more people didn't speak up at the meeting and either contribute to teaching or ask questions, as I'm quite sure not everyone could have picked everything up as quickly as we moved (and I'm not that great a teacher). I hope that as we move forward, more students will speak up, (and incidently question authority and design decisions for the benefit of the team).

 

 

We haven't really had enough exposure to each other so far to give peer review. It is definitely good to have experienced C# programmers in the class and those who fit into a leadership role easily. No one has exhibited any behaviour that should be looked upon poorly, at least not yet!

Brad seems to be pulling the class for a strong start this semester

Brad has been doing a great job taking charge of the Web Services tutorial and testing.

As of now I can only say Brad seems to be going a good job leading and teaching, and Matt also seems to be doing well. Other members chime in when they can be useful, but I think those two are taking the most visible leadership roles. It is still too early to say anything decisive, however.

I've worked with Kevin Le a little bit with trying to get started with writing a Web Service, and was pleasantly surprised that we simply needed to extend a class and write code.
Also, I was afraid before this class started that either everyone would try to lead (we're Rice students), or, everyone would just sit back and wait for someone else to step up (we're CS students). But I think that people are finding roles and we're establishing a good balance of leaders and followers.

A few people have stepped up and helped everyone (Who are these mysterious strangers? Name them, and let them know they're doing a good job. --Barnaby), which is good since many of us seemed to be at a loss for what a web service was exactly, and the specifics of our task. (I was, at least.) For the rest of the class (anyone who didn't really talk during the meeting), see above.

No one did anything bad - it takes a while to get started talking. Brad did a great job, and Aaron also had a lot of good insights.

My biggest advice for the majority of the class who didn't participate in the standards discussion is to try to learn the concepts as fast as possible this weekend, and ask those of us who seem to know what we're doing (myself included, I think) as many questions as possible.

 

 

Let's hope Sharepoint can handle HTML properly. :D
UPDATE (2007/31/08, 9:51 PM): Looks hideous. They decided to add linebreaks because of my beautiful indenting.

 

It is still a bit too early for anything I write to have real weight or basis on something besides first impressions.

This is going to be an interesting class and a fun group, I think.