Need an Upgrade?

Upgrading a program can always be fun or troublesome, depending on how you look at it and the amount of work involved. The silver team, Ronn and I, were given the chance to add some new features and do other improvements to our DueDates program. Also we were able to make some corrections that we over looked in version 1.0, with help from the results that we received from our peers before and during the 1.1 upgrade.

New Features
The new specifications of the 1.1 version of DueDates was to add in the “sort” feature, which enables the user to sort the rented books by either its due date or by the location where it was rented from. Also another feature was the “within” function; which was to calculate, when given a number, the books that are due within that range of days. These new additions were not so hard to implement into the program. When designing the initial version, we always kept in mind that we wanted to make it easy to further upgrade the program somewhere in the near future.
The Process
Before adding the new specification to our program, we wanted to make some changes to the system’s structure. In the first version, we both wanted to use a XML repository to store the libraries; which would serve something like a table of libraries, with each library as a row in the table. So we took this opportunity to integrate the XML repository to this new version. We both sought out and looked online for guides on how to do this process, I for one was excited to see how this could be done. After searching for a day, we found some very good articles and instructions on how to add XML into our program. Also during the search we found an open source program, Argparser by John E. Lloyd, which would make the inclusion of the new specifications easier to add into the program.

Adding in the two new features, the XML repository and the Argparser, took some time. When we included the Argparser at first we incorporated the source files; but that cause so much errors, some were easy to fix and some were mind bending. After hours of error solving we just simply decided to just add the Argparser jar file into system’s library, making it still apart of the program just not with the all the errors. In the addition of the XML repository, this was very interesting on how it stores the libraries. With this, both users and developers of the program are able add in a library of their choice.

With the new features added on, we were able to now add in the new specifications. Integrating the “sort” function was simply done, due to how our system was created, we just had to make minor changes to file that involved such a function. Also with the “within” function of the program, it went the same way; because both functions were related to the same files that need to be changed. Adding these functions as options for the users of the program was easily included, due to the Argparser we recently added.

Troublesome
With all upgrades, minor or major, there will always be problems. The dilemmas we encountered in upgrading, was adding in the Argparser. When we initially added the source files, we got so many errors. Like mentioned earlier, some were easy and some were hard; but it seemed that when we fixed one error 5 more would appear. We then resolved that issue by not including the source files, but using the program’s jar file. Another problem we had was the QA (Quality Assurance) tool, PMD. The errors we received from this the tool was such a bother. It caused us to go back into our implementation and revise some changes we did to this new version of DueDates. I know it has its reasons for giving us those errors, but PMD (Pretty Much Depressing) can be troublesome.

Keep Moving Forward
This advancement in our program went by smoothly, giving the amount of time we had and the amount of work we had to do. We met as much as we could in the process of upgrading the program, meeting every other day; but once we finished a large chunk of the work we met via Skype. We also divided the amount of work evenly and also helped each other when ever one of use hit a brick wall. With great team work, we were able to conqueror the battle of upgrading.


I didn’t make as much commits to the Google Project page, fearing of the Hudson checks would give us rainy days. Hudson was like an extra professor checking our work. Overall this was another good experience for our futures, working in a team as a team. Also using new programs and integrating other program languages to our system was educational. As I mentioned before we originally thought of further upgrades to the program, which is the reason for its structure. So all we can do now is to “Keep Moving Forward” –Meet the Robinsons, hopefully advancing with a Graphics User Interface.


Links:
Argparser by John E. Lloyd