David Gibbon’s Software Development Blog

Still getting hibernate integrated!

Well it took these few days since Saturday to get the project compiling -certain required libraries weren’t showing up to the java compiler, i luckily discovered an error this morning in my build.xml script which was excluding them from the classpath. One step closer!

I’m still finding inconsitencies in the Spring libraries where they’re pointing to old packages so hibernate is not yet up and running, though it compiles, it fails at runtime in tomcat as tomcat can’t find the packages pointed to by classloaders. Must find solution!

Last night, I formatted my laptop as it was running very slowly.

I backed everything up and need to get the technologies up and running again.

I’ve got eclipse, Spring, JSP, tomcat and mysql back working again, still haven’t got hibernate going as per myriad examples.

Some sort of version incompatibilities between Spring and Hibernate.

Package names changed between hibernate 2 and 3. Spring 2.0.6 seems to reference the old ones, Have downloaded Spring 2.0.7 which seems to have addressed that but there’s still some problem pointing to the old package.

Meeting with DM 

Today we met with DM (our client for the project) for the first time. We had set out an agenda and managed the one hour quite well. Our agenda was as follows:

1. DM feedback on pitch document
2. DM Q&A
3. High level requirement review
4. Schedule access database review in North Strand
5. Schedule weekly catch-up (Week 4-13 Requirement gathering)
6. Receive data capture forms

The first item was to discuss a pitch, a high level version of our view of the proposed system, we had sent to DM a week previous. This went well, as DM had prepared quite a lot of feedback on the document and allowed for plenty of discussion, it nicely transitioned into items 2 and 3.

Our system is broken into two sections- a public facing  Shop Front and a Customer Management System for staff to use, to manage customers, products and the Shop Front.

DM’s main desires with the Shop Front were to have a site that would appear personal and simple, mimicking his business. He wanted some SEO done, a clear, minimal and simple design to allow easy use, and for it to appeal to a younger market.

It was decided that the site wouldn’t accept payments online as most of the payments are made using direct debit.

A list of products that we could start work on was decided. They would fall under two categories: those that would offer some information and then refer the user to DM for further advice; and those that the user could apply for and buy online.

The idea of a virtual Advisor character was proposed, who could explain terminologies, ask certain questions and offer a suitable product.

Some companies in the financial services space  were suggested by DM for research and resources.

DM also went through some of his compliance requirements around offering a quote or selling a product.

After a lengthy discussion on the Shop Front we decided to tackle the Management System.

Ideas we propsed included:

• Reports and Statistics (Customers,Products,Renewals)
• Document Management per Customer
• Product Editor (Add/remove/edit products on shopfront)

It’s clear that we’ll need to hammer down some more definite requirements, particularly for the CMS.

Meeting with Howard Duncan 

Agenda:

Today was the first of our weekly catch-up meetings with Howard. Our agenda was as follows:

1. Discuss Technology Integration – JSP, Flex, Sql

2. Discuss DM pitch

3. Discuss Meeting DM01

Our first item was to discuss the technology integration we have done so far.

We described how we had JSP, javascript, Flex and SQL all working together in a small web page. Hovering over sections on the page sent messages to the Flex application embedded in the page. The Flex application then reacted to these messages. For example hovering over a blue box on the webpage caused the flex background the become blue. Or hovering over a ‘customer’ name from the mySql DB cause the Flex application to say hello to that customer.

Secondly, as tomorrow we are meeting Dermot Martin we discussed with Howard the pitch document we sent to Dermot last week. The pitch document is quite similar to the original project proposal document, but had added sections to illicit some feedback and questions from Dermot. Howard’s main concern with the document was how much of it Dermot Martin would be able to understand phrases such as “three tier architecture” and “XML based products”.

Our final agenda item was to discuss tomorrow’s meeting with Dermot and to discuss requirements gathering in general. It was decided that an iterative approach using prototypes would be the best way to approach this development. It will allow Dermot to see how the application is shaping at different points throughout the development and hopefully aid in the requirements definition process.

The following Action Items were noted:

1. Integrate a plan for the next four weeks placing milestones into existing project timeline up to the functional specification deadline.

2. Document Iterative approach and explain reasoning in functional spec.

3. The functional specification submitted will be the first major version and subject to revision due to requirements gathering timeframe.

4. Begin blogging.

Howard suggested that we require a more detailed project timeline, as we have so far been planning on a week-by-week basis.

It would be a good idea to document the iterative approach we are taking to the project and explain the reasoning in the Functional Spec.

As requirements gathering is likely to extend further than the functional spec deadline, Howard said it would be OK to submit the Functional Spec as it was at the deadline and for the requirements to develop further afterwards.

The 4th action item was to begin blogging and this is the first (proper) entry.

Development Work

Up to now I have integrated Java, JSP, Spring, SQL and flex all running under tomcat. Today I am starting to integrate Hibernate, which is an Object Relational Model (ORM) framework. This package should help to map business objects to database records.

It hasn’t been easy to get a simple example application of hibernate to work just yet!

Here’s the first post of my CA400 Project Blog!