Fall 2007

• We finally decided on a standard interface. Hopefully this interface will allow all services to connect to each other. This will be tested out on Saturday.
  • Namespace for all webservices will be comp410f07.warmup
  • There will be 5 WebMethod functions.
  • String[] Search(String query, Guid guid)
    This is the search method. The query is an XML string. The Guid is a unique identifier associated with the service. The return is an array of XML strings. This was chosen over a block of XML code because then we would need to encapsulate it in a parent tag and doing so would cause problems when merging the results from other sources.
  • void AddServer(String url)
    This is the method to add a server. The only reason it is in the standard interface is because it must be a web method to be accessible by the web application and therefore there may be WSDL issues if the signature is standardized across all services.
  • void RemoveServer(String url)
    Method to remove server from the list for a webservice. Justification is as for AddServer().
  • void ListServers()
    Returns an array of strings which each represent server urls. Again, justification is as above for AddServer().
  • byte[] Download(String xml)
    This is one of the main functions. The download XML string will be given to the server that a file belongs to which will then do the job of finding the filepath and handling it as required and returning it to the requesting webapp.
• Completed local search method and wrote the method for search other servers. I am using a MySQL database backend to handle files and servers. If I have time, I may consider making loop checking less resource-heavy by generating a search ID an then storing Guids in the database. Currently guids are stored as a static member of the Service class. I'm hosting the MySQL database on my own server.
• I've designed about 80% of the frontend of the application. This includes the search box and the method used to display results. What remains to be done is the functionality to do downloads.
• My webapp is up and running at http://www.skynet2.cs.rice.edu/comp410f07/smisra/p2papp and the only file that returns a result is "foo.bar".
• I will have to write a little script either in PHP or ASP that will scan the directories and index the files.
• I have managed to connect to myself as another service locally. I haven't yet tried this on Skynet though locally I can verify that simple loop checking does in fact work.

This is a nice, detailed list that gives people a pretty strong idea of where you are. --Kristin

Update: I'm able to be connected with Aeron (Aaron)  and Sohum and connect to Sohum's service.

My biggest gain this week was getting web services on Skynet 2 and 3 to talk to each other. After I figured out how to do this, I wrote up instructions on how to create a web service on the Skynet servers. (Great! Way to document! --Kristin) (generally useful information like this should not be buried in the middle of a discussion thread however.  Move it out to someplace easier to find.  Except for this link, there is nothing that anyone can use to know that this information is available. -- SW) Getting the Skynet machines to communicate let us know that many of the things we had hoped--but weren't sure--would work did actually work. For example, we learned we could use the .Url property in a web service to connect to a remote machine, and easily send strings over a network connection.

After that, I worked on setting up my own backend code, which had been lagging until then. I now have a web service on Skynet 2 that can query and display results from other machines and accept and process queries. The biggest thing it cannot do is download files.

I also took a couple of hours to bring other people up to speed on ASP.NET, specifically web applications, since I have more experience in the area than most of the team.

But what have you personally gotten done on the project this last week? How far along is your project solution? We do appreciate a report of overall progress though. --Barnaby

I was able to learn with Aaron's help how to create the webapp/aspx front end, which I had been concerned about last week. I need to add the AddServer text box and button there, and then link it to my web service, and that part will be done (for the minimum functionality anyway). I'm only concerned about the linking part, but I already made a web reference in the web service, so that part should be straightforward.

In the web service itself, I still need to make the AddServer function, put the XML parsing into my Search function, and make the Download function. I need to do some more testing on what I already have as well.

Sounds like you are doing well (and very good detail, by the way), but before you start adding extra features, you might want to see how other classmates are doing; there's at least a few that are lagging behind and may need some extra help. --Kristin

-Attended the meetings on Monday and Wednesday: WOW, we got a LOT of major progress done on Monday. Much more than prior. A lot of things about the design of the server and app make sense to me now. Wednesday allowed us to find where everybody is, and make some progress towards refining our standards.

-Standards set forth. They can be found here

-Skynet: With skynet being up, actually being able to code and work have allowed me to make some major gains.

-Up to now, everything works up to functionality with the exception of downloading on the web-app side, and handling results of searches done (also on the web app side). At the start of this week, I had...nothing, or close to it.

Thanks for the links--very helpful! --Kristin

Good detail and helpful for any others that were having the same problem. --Kristin

What exactly does "it is working" mean? Could you be more specific on what features work, and which do not? Has it been tested with other people's code? --Kristin

By Friday, I had a complete, working web service and web app, but no one else's was ready yet so I was only able to search and download from my own web service. My progress during the week included:
- Researching (a vague term.  What exactly about downloading where you looking for? -- SW) Download methods, from the remote service to the web app to the user
- Implementing above methods and describing them to others
- Writing XML parsing and formatting code as described by Felipe (by posting code, Felipe saved everyone a lot of time!  Remember that!)
- A working local search function (that searches directories recursively)
- MIME type detection, based on the file's extension and registry lookups
- A ServerList object that keeps track of the list of remote web services and records them in a .cfg file
- Implemented the web app that interfaces with my web service
I also set up an IRC channel and a logging bot - see the development process section for my comments on its usefulness.

• We encountered a few obstacles on getting our standardization right. Trying to use objects and SOAP proved to become too complicated.
• Getting services to be publicly accessible.
• Figuring out how to generate a button dynamically and assign an event handler to it. This will be needed in my GUI when I get a list of XML results, parse it and display it in a table. I will need to put a download button on every row and hence each download button event handler will have some context (the file name and path).
• Searches have to pass through every linked server before they are returned to the user. This can potentially lead to a large search time (as the search query may pass through all 13 servers.

- Adding/removing servers is not implemented
- Downloading is not finished yet so maybe there will be obstacles in the process

1. Coray cannot connect to my service. There is an error message. I don't know whether it is my problem or his problem. But now I still cannot be connected to by other people. I thought I can connect to Coray's, but actually I can't.
2. Still can't figure out how to find my local host url(I don't completely understand what you mean. It sounds like you just need to just use "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" as the location and then add on the service information, but I could be wrong. Perhaps either asking a TA or a fellow student directly would lead you to an answer. TAs post phone numbers and IM names online for a reason. --Barnaby). I've read the article about System.Net.DNS but I don't think that works.
3. I still have to work on exception handling. I'm not sure whether my service/application can handle all the errors since I only tried legal input. This is pretty important. You definitely won't be able to declare your project "done" until you have tested it with different types of input!

The networking on Rice's campus is absolutely baffling. I'm grateful to Dr. Wong for letting us use the Skynet machines, because I don't think I would've been able to get any two machines in Symonds to network, no matter how long I tried.

Again, as Barnaby said above, this section should be more oriented to personal goals met. How is your individual project progressing, and what goals did you fail to achieve? --Kristin

The obstacle this week for me was that I got sick friday night. This wiped out some major planned coding time for me, and also stopped me from coming to the meeting on saturday. The other obstacles, like being stuck on the webapp, I was able to solve by getting help from other team members.

Since last week, we've suffered several major setbacks. We had to change the specification more than twice due to lack of support of some functions in C#. To be specific, originally we would try to send a Dictionary between functions via SOAP. However, it turns out IDictionary objects (or at least the ones currently in the library) cannot be serialized.
After we found this, we quickly switched to sending LinkedLists of KeyValuePairs. However, we again ran into a serialization problem where generics cannot be serialized properly (they are instead created as unusable objects in the web reference namespace.)

 

Besides just shifting specifications repeatedly, we ran into problems getting computers to connect between each other due to IIS issues (which remain unsolved, but I believe have to do with security and application problems), and in the end had to switch to using the SkyNet servers to run our web applications.
On top of this as well, we found out towards the end of the week (Saturday specifically) that the entire function signature (including parameter names and types) has to be exactly the same, which was unexpected and leaded to strange errors, since values would become either null or default new values if it was not done properly.

Downloading also took several days to sort out how to properly handle, but luckily the simplest system was also the most efficient (the MTOM standard, which is currently the preferred method of sending files and the such like, is done as simple byte arrays for sending. All the work is done by a plugin package that merely has to be downloaded and enabled)

I'm not quite sure whether this section is for obstacles that I have encountered, or obstacles that I am currently encountering.

Obstacles that I have encountered
-Unclarity on downloading items, ore moreover how to: cleared thanks to the post by Corey and supplement (reply) by Derek

-Was unsure of how to actually establish a web reference so as to connect to another server: Felipe explained the process to me on IRC.   Did you write this down somewhere?  This issue will come up again--don't rely on memory and an assumption that everyone else will remember it too.  -- SW

-Global variables vs. Session variables vs. Application variables were discussed at some point I remember, but Hubert helped drill it thoroughly into my head. Right now the list of servers is a session variable along with the current working directory, but the list of Guids is an application variable.    Once again, this is something that should go in a "Web Apps Helpful Tips" document/list somewhere. -- SW


Current Obstacles:
-I'm getting sick, and my sleep schedule has become incredibly...well...bad.

-A few other things of note, but those will be listed in the development section

Good detail, but again, in the wrong section. How have you individually progressed? Are you where you wanted to be by this point in time? --Kristin

When I build my Website in Visual Studio in skynet2, it doesn't automatically create and application. I created it manually and it seems to work, but only when the test server is up.

I have yet to figure out the download procedure, but that should be a matter of a few minutes.

Have the standards that were eventually decided upon been documented anywhere? --Kristin

I had planned to go home this weekend, since it's the only weekend I have before Fall Break. Unfortunately, this caused a bit of a problem with the looming deadline - I worked hard during the week to have my code as complete as possible by the time that I went home on Friday. I wanted to be able to test connecting to someone else's web service before I left, but I could not because no one else had the same time restrictions as I had. And then, when I got home, I realized I couldn't log onto Skynet because my VPN wasn't set up.

• We dropped down to straight-up XML. The proposed semantics are linked above in the milestone section. While we have already solved this obstacle, it held up the progress quite a bit.
• This obstacle was also solved; Dr. Wong graciously offered us the Skynet servers to the class. This has allowed us to test interoperability (or will allow us to do so).
• I found a tutorial explaining how to do this using delegates. In haste I ended up closing the page. I hope to find it again. The gist of it is to create a custom event handler and use a delegate to allow us to pass in a parameter to the event handler. The event handler method we then write will allow us to use this parameter.
• We haven't really thought about this too much since the highest priority is to get something working before getting something more complicated working. A proposed solution is using an iterator, though we haven't researched it any further.

At this point in time, should you be waiting a whole day to get help? --Kristin

1. I've post my web service address on the discussion board and wait for result.(And what do you do if no one responds? how much time will you have lost? Just waiting for things to happen doesn't guarantee a solution. Don't be afraid of using IRC or the contact information on Sharepoint to get answers. --Barnaby)I agree with Barnaby. You can't just sit on your laurels and hope an answer comes to you. Be proactive in getting help; remember, everyone else has lots of work to do too. --Kristin
2. For local host url, I'm still searching on Google.

The big obstacle was solved by moving to Skynet. All that remains is cranking out the downloading code and making sure everyone else's services work.

I should wash my mouth out with SOAP.

We need to make interop functionality a priority so that we can begin testing our systems together.

We need to get a couple of working implementations as proof of concept to ensure that we'll avert further

major issues.

The solution for me is to stay home and rest up, and do some major coding to catch up. I won't be going anywhere today, so that should be fine. I won't make the deadline of our meeting time, but I should be done by the end of the day.

Usually I tend to do fewer, longer coding sessions on a project, rather than a large number of small sessions. However, I am beginning to think for this class that it might be better to try to do it the other way. Especially when it has been described to think of this not as a class, but a company. At a company, work proceeds in a more steady fashion, rather than random large bursts of activity.

At this point, all problems seem to ("Seems to" is always a dangerous phrase --Kristin) have been solved. Several people have finished the program and are adding features or working out random bugs, so right now the focus is shifting to people who haven't gotten pieces working, and making sure they have all the resources and help they need. Good. That's where the focus should be. --Kristin

The specifications eventually were cemented down to the following: Function Specifications XML Specifications

Right now, the only thing that I need to do I feel, is just sit down and code. The only things left are the actual code to manage downloads on the Web App's side, and a variation on my XML parsing code to handle multiple results. Seems easily doable. (Is this you being hopeful or have you seen this with other classmates? Beware of making statements about how easy things are until after you have finished testing. --Kristin) Testing will verify if that statement has any weight to it.

Yes, you should definitely help those lagging behind, since one of the goals of the project is for everyone to have compatible projects. And just because you get the impression things are one way, it is very helpful to actually verify this. --Kristin

Try to build a completely new project on a different skynet machine and see if when I build/publish that one it will be placed in the right location in IIS as an applicaiton and not simply as folder.

Don't forget "ask other people to see if they've had the same problem". -- SW

As far as the download, there's enough posts on Sharepoint that I can us.

-We finally decided to test our ideas before making them "official", and that way not force everyone to re-write code over and over again for ideas that didn't work, for some reason or another.
-As for connecting, we decided to put everything up on Skynet, and that seems to be working much better.

Obviously I need to get VPN set up for the next time I need to work remotely from home. That would have solved the main problem of not being able to do anything during the weekend - now with IRC and forums and other ways of communicating I think I could still work effectively from home, as long as I had access to.

 

But great detail on the "what"! --Kristin

Is there anything else? How is the team interacting as a whole? What is working and what isn't? --Kristin

Communication is improved a lot.
1. I think we really made a progress in the meetings and class. Everyone had chances to ask questions and brought up issues.
2. The new surveys also help us to know others' progress and problems.
3. The scribes of the meetings are well written, and really helped me when I forgot something discussed in the meetings.
4. It's good that we have IRC channel. Although it haven't played an important role so far, at least we have a place to ask for help and get responses immediately.

It would be good to actually appoint leaders, rather than just assuming the "natural" leaders know they are. This could cause some very...interesting...conflicts later on. --Kristin

1. However, organizing into teams helped us in a number of ways:
   It allowed us to use our own "distributedness" to work in parallel on useful things instead of all being blocked waiting for standards to be revised to yet another non-working form.
2. It created accountability at an individual level, which required everyone to show some results.
3. It formed smaller groups in which it was less intimidating to share knowledge, seek help, and learn without worrying about group perception.

At first I was too focused on the task at hand (we'll just spec out what's needed, and have everyone do their own thing) to see that we could make better use of our time by breaking into smaller teams, investigating possibilities rather than just debating them, and at the same time learning Web Services Development by experience in a group setting where team members could stand by to answer questions and help resolve issues more quickly.

This realization of the importance of this style of development is a big thing that's been working in the last week.

Perhaps because of this team style development, and also just due to greater comfort and much discussion, the situation with all team members contributing to discussion and debate has improved dramatically. Also this is likely due to a greater comfort with the technologies among the team members. I've tried to facilitate communication of progress and issues with the survey but I'm not sure it goes far enough. At least it gives us a relatively quick way to check in on the status of everyone's progress.

We made a lot of progress developmentally this week. The biggest thing I think was deciding to split some of the work up into different groups. Not only did this get things done faster, focus the tasks on something managable, and give everyone clear goals, but it also was a chance for more people to speak up. Our meeting process is getting better with the addition of agendas, but I think we can still improve in this area.

Having very regular meetings is VERY helpful, and is working well. Also, good delegation is very effective, although we only really started in late into the project (only for the download proof of concept, as mentioned elsewhere).

-IRC Channel - This lets us communicate very easily with anyone who's around and able to help Kudos to Corey for setting it up, and allowing us to talk to Matt while he fights off illness.

-Group cohesion - I don't know why, in fact it's hard to describe, but we seem to be working well as a group and help each other out very nicely.

-Scheduling and attending meetings: short of inability to come due to illness, we've met regularly, and most all of us make it to each meeting. Meetings have been informative, to the point, and having a scribe is a good thing.

Which portions of the project did each group handle? Which group were you in? --Kristin

Were these solutions posted in a place that is easy for everyone to find, or buried somewhere deep in the discussion boards? --Kristin

This is more of a technical description that belongs in the milestone section. What is going on with the team? How have you interacted with them and how has everyone interacted as a group? --Kristin

I set up an IRC channel for us to idle in and communicate faster with the rest of the class. This seems to be helpful, but the more people who just idle in, the better it will be. I also spent some time on Saturday writing a logger for the channel, so conversations are not lost. I hope all of this will be useful for our development process now and down the road.

One thing that really stood out to me was on the Monday night meeting, when we split into teams to figure out how to do different aspects of the program. One was for information passing (XML), one for searching, one for downloads (that included me - I was on a smaller subteam specifically looking at returning a byte array), and another for interoperability. I felt that this allowed us all to have more specific tasks, so we had something to focus on. It also enabled us to get a lot more done; previously we were all working on the same thing and were getting nowhere fast.

Are there any other problems that aren't related to technologies used? --Kristin

I need to learn to ask for help. This is my biggest problem. Maybe it's a pride issue. I'm afraid that I would seem stupid when my fellow classmates have figured out how to do something and I haven't. Today, Dr. Wong told me to talk to people and ask for help if needed. Will work on it. =)

IRC. It's good that we have IRC channel, but it seems no people is there. The responses are as slow as in the discussion board.

 

We divided up into groups for some aspects, and the end results seemed good, but I feel the teams didn't have enough structure, and it seemed like some people may have slipped through the cracks and not ended up in teams.

It really seems like everyone is waiting for someone else to step forward and say: here's a working example, now get yours to work with it.

Good observation. --Kristin

Instead they're twiddling with the background details (which in general is ok) instead of focusing on interoperability as a first goal. This is a self-defeating team behavior, as so many other parts of the project depend on testing at an interoperating level, that one of our first priorities should be to get systems connected as quickly as possible, so that we can test them in a connected environment.

It's also something of a problem that we still don't do a great job of making decisions available in a public, well-documented way. I've become increasingly convinced that Discussion Boards, especially on SharePoint are the wrong tool for this, and we need a wiki (I'd compare our usage of discussion boards to something like trying to drive in screws with a pocket-knife attachment: it works, but I'd rather use a power drill).

Yes, it is very useful to have well-documented decisions that everyone can easily find--normally a tough proposition when using Sharepoint. But it would definitely be good for design decisions not to be solely on the discussion boards. --Kristin

I'm also thinking of ideas for some easier type of milestone progress report (both easier for students to update their status and easier to monitor the group progress) for the actual semester project. I might hack something together in asp.net to try to serve our needs.

Owlspace actually has a PHPBB forum which I think could be very efficient. If that's not good, I can set up a PHPBB forum on my personal server. I think PHPBB would be quite useful because it is a real-world forum software and something people are used to, unlike Sharepoint discussion board which is just annoying for the most part. -Sohum

Have you seen the lists we created last year on Sharepoint, with fields to update exactly where you are in your milestone and what you have left to do? When people actually made the effort to look at the lists, they didn't do too badly. --Kristin

 

As I said above, I think we can do better with our meeting process. Maybe tighter, better defined agendas would help. I think there is a balance of how much discussion is good during the meeting itself, and how much should be postponed until after all the other business has been dealt with. I think we tend to try and research questions during the meeting, when instead we should just note things we don't have answers for, research them afterwards, and then post the answers.

I am also thinking for full group meetings that we should consider holding them in one of the meeting rooms in Duncan. Symonds is good for coding, but not really ideal for administrative/design/planning meetings.

Currently, the biggest problem we have run into is that we spend a lot of time choosing a certain method of doing something that doesn't actually work in practice (such as the fiasco with our Search method standardization, changing at least 2 times.) The problem is simply that we assume things work as would seem logical or standard, and it is becoming clear this is not always the case. (Good, we learned that it was never good to assume anything. --Kristin) This problem is already disappearing, however, as demonstrated by our handling of download, for example, where we had 3 teams of 2 people each figure out a method of doing download while everyone else finished Search up. For the most part, we just need to have more proofs of concept and more division of labor.

-SharePoint: I am beginning to loathe SharePoint, if only because it is not very well organized, which is a major problem because it's designed specifically to not have this problem. A major issue for me is that in the discussion board, it doesn't act as a forum - if I want to see a post and all its replies in their entirety, there's no way to do that! Active threads should also be bumped up! There should be a way to "sticky" threads so they stay at the top! With no way to do this, the discussion board becomes ridiculously messy, and it's VERY easy to lose information in it. I might try to futz around with making a board to see if this is fixable, but it doesn't look likely. Also, adding pictures on here was a real pain.

It seems that Sohum has made a forum that is not on Sharepoint and is of much higher quality. However, will moving information off the centralized site help or hinder, even if it is a fancier, easier to use board? --Kristin

As I keep saying, a major part of this problem is that the discussion board is being misused.  A discussion board is not and was never meant to be a critical information repository.  Technology does not intrisically cure disorganization.   One must still think carefully about where information needs to be located. -- SW

-My computer: Mein Komputer ist kaputt. Sehr traurig.

-Disorganization: I'm currently really disorganized right now. My comp has been down but I have the parts and built the system. The only thing missing is an operating system. Unfortunately that won't come until Monday, so it's of no help to me now. Homework for other classes caught me unawares, mostly brought on by the fact that I didn't have a lot of the books for them until late in the game (I still don't have a book for my stat class! No tracking number either :( ). I'm not making excuses though, so much as venting. Overall, I really need to get it together.

-Immune System: The last week, my girlfriend, and then my roommate got sick. Well, I was sitting fine and dandy up until Friday evening, when I felt something in the back of my throat. Well crap. Now I'm sitting here, sick and wishing I wasn't, especially with this weekend being so work-intensive. So far it's just some soreness and a really bad sore throat, but I don't know. I hope you feel better. --Kristin

-Skynet 3: Seems to go down at random times. Not often, but often enough to be impeding to work for half-an-hour at times. I'm guessing it's maintenance?

 

 

This is a rather vague statement. Which solutions are overly complex? Why is this so? Overarching statements like this don't help others, since they don't necessarily know what you are talking about. --Kristin

I keep thinking of Barnaby's comment last week about being very optimistic. Now is a bit late in the project to be hoping that everyone is making good progress without actually checking in. --Kristin

"Everything seems to be going well" is a statement that will definitely come back to haunt you. In a group this big, things are never what they seem (although it seems that you are again describing your own technical issues, rather than group interactions). It is much better to be proactive about finding out how everyone is doing rather than waiting until the due date and frantically trying to react.

I feel like we should have set a more strict deadline on everyone having a working web service, preferably Friday. This was important to me because I was leaving then, but even without that I feel like we could have used a solid 2 days to test our services, or to have some slack time in case there were bugs to iron out. Since I was really the first to have something working, I didn't have anyone to test with, and I was forced to wait until Sunday night until I could test.

• Using a proper forum like the PHPBB one that is provided on Owlspace may end up being more useful.(Moving to a different discussion board system might help with usability issues but it doesn't fix the problem of being able to find information easily. Perhaps decisions should be recorded in another form, in a different section of the Sharepoint site. --Barnaby)
• Everyone needs to speak more loudly. Once people have taken decisions, the attention of the class should be drawn and everyone should be notified. This has been done most of the time, but I still feel like either some of the information makes it straight to Sharepoint or others only gets said in class.(A decent idea, in theory. In practice, relying on each individual to change their behavior doesn't work. Perhaps figuring out a way to address the problems with a single point of failure would work. --Barnaby)

I guess this is not change per se, but I like increased sharing of our findings/knowledge on discussion board. I don't know why but the same information gets lost (for me) when delivered verbally. Maybe I need to work on my listening skills...?

You should, but it will not always happen that way, I guarantee it. How can you encourage quick and efficient information sharing? --Kristin

Agreed. --Kristin

I think the process we have now will serve us through the warm-up project. However, I sincerely hope that we will have more defined roles in the actual semester project, in particular, this project's style creates a weird division between what are team responsibilities and what are individual responsibilities. I hinted at that above when I talked about the fact that everyone seems to be waiting on everyone else to post a working example that they can test against.

In any case, we definitely have a lot of work to do as far as creating a capable organizational structure for a semester long project (our current system will turn into chaos in short order) (Agreed. --Kristin). I have some ideas about how we should divide up responsibilities, but I'd like to discuss this with the team before I set anything out in writing.

I think tighter, focused agendas and a true meeting room will help us make our meetings more productive. I think we can get through everything we need to discuss in a shorter amount of time, have question period, and then split into groups for research, coding, etc.

For now we seem to be on the right track, and have worked a lot of the kinks out. However, we need to make sure we don't become lax about planning, regular meetings, delegation, and the such like. Also, we really need to be better about posting information on SharePoint. We're getting better at it, but aren't great yet.

-I wrote out the change proposals on sharepoint in the appropriate area.

-I've been working on skynet through friends' laptops.

-This weekend has given me some reprieve to catch up on a lot of things including

-I'm eating cough drops like mad. I think my tongue is permanently colored some strange hue right now.

-I don't know how to fix Skynet 3.

As Chelsea says, John Madden...?
This is why it is helpful to have much more detailed problems, so you can have a much more detailed and helpful answer. --Kristin

Although you could find that, come tomorrow, it is a very big problem when people are much further behind than you expected. The object of the project is for everyone's programs to be compatible with all of the others, which seems to necessitate checks on progress... --Kristin

Again, "I think we're good" isn't good enough. In a group setting, there are always at least one or two weaknesses that can be improved upon. Perhaps one is everyone not being on the same page. --Kristin

Deadlines deadlines deadlines! We should have more of them and people need to take them seriously. If someone puts off their comp 410 work for other responsibilities or anything else, it hurts the team as a whole. The more intermediate deadlines we have, the easier it will be to work toward them as goals and to keep progress moving forward for everyone.

Many thanks to Derek for showing me how to access other services and Corey for showing me a good way to handle servers.

Yes, they should be more vocal, but maybe they have problems speaking up. If you are worried about their status, you should actively try to find out.

Nice shoutouts, and a great way to boost everyone's confidence. However, I wouldn't throw a party quite yet. We didn't have any conflicts until someone showed up the day our warmup project was due and said that he hadn't done it...

Everyone spoke more this week which was great! Brad did a lot of work to get a full service working with another instance of itself on his computer and searching for files, leading us through a lot of the issues and details of getting the project to run. Aaron helped several of us with the details of aspx, as well as getting two services up on two skynet servers and getting them to communicate. Felipe and Dave stepped up to take and post meeting minutes. Felipe and Rae led a group to work out the xml parsing, and Corey and Derek spearheaded the efforts on file download. I think some of the others may have contributed more in their small group settings, so hopefully the group members can speak to that.

Everyone seems to be doing a good job, so no complaints.

Everyone has been REALLY helpful, and courteous about it as well. When I was getting behind and my status was kind of off, Matt checked with me real quick, encouraged me to talk to other people and get as much as I needed. It's little things like that, that I feel help out. Felipe's really helped me with a few random problems here and there - his sleeping habits seem to be fairly late oriented as well. While I'm unsure of the full status of everyone else, I get the overall feeling that we're all on the right track and know what we're doing.

Great job on giving people props that have been working hard. However, the rest of your journal doesn't describe at all how you have been lagging. This is why you need to use the milestone section for your personal progress. Please let other people on the team know ASAP that you are lagging so they can help you out. --Kristin

Great job of giving people props for their hard work. --Kristin

I think that Brad did a great job helping everyone get their service to completion this weekend. I wish I could've been here to help.
Aaron was a huge resource with his knowledge of web apps, web services, and how to connect them. He helped me with strange errors on numerous occasions.
Derek and I had some good discussions ironing out the pros and cons of different download methods. In general, thanks to anyone who did an amount of research on figuring out how, or the best way, to do something. This project would have been immeasurably difficult for one person to tackle in two weeks' time.   You don't think we planned it that way, do you?  ;-)   -- SW
The only complaint I have is about the people who are often quiet - Speak up! You usually have something helpful to say, so don't be afraid to say it.

 

Good journal, and love the detail on the milestone gains. A little more detail on obstacles and solutions would be nice. --Kristin
Late; -5pts.

Word documents are also useful. --Kristin

I agree with Chelsea. Good job. --Kristin
Late; -5pts.

This is pretty late (about 27 hours and 43 minutes.) Sorry about that.

 

Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry about this being late. Wow, ridiculously late at that. I'm also poorly organized at this point so it's getting hard to juggle a lot of issues at once - ie: the comp, getting the pictures up, getting this journal done, and homework for all other classes. The weekend has thankfully given me some reprise so I can put some order into all of this.

Yes, Sharepoint can be a royal pain; we complained about it plenty last year. However, it's the technology you have to work with... --Kristin

 

 

Thanks for writing this so quickly after I called. Just so you know, journals are due every week, even when you have separate milestone reports. --Kristin

2 days late; 10 pts

 

I apologize for the long delay in getting this journal posted. In the confusion that was being home this weekend, having this huge deadling, and being sick, it completely slipped my mind. It won't happen again.