Pursuing Excellence in Design and Technology - Raj Lal

Sunday, February 20, 2005

The Experience Granth

---- The enriching experience GRANTH 1.0 ---

Experiences with Granth Project as a step in learning Object Oriented
approach to Software Engineering.


Instructor: Ayman Abdel - Hamid


Dept. of Computer Science


Lamar University,


Team: Anjali Singh, Rajesh Lal, Bhaskar Reddy, Nivedita Despande, Srinivas
Vandraj.


Introduction


The Project Granth 1.0 is all about building of an online library system. The
project was not just an assignment project for us. It was more of an excitement,
a challenge, a unique opportunity to implement the object oriented paradigm in a
live project. During the different phases of the project we learnt and grew with
the project. We would have to give the name of Anjali here, without her complete
dedication and hard work and quick learning ability this project could not have
been how it is today. And most of all we would like to thanks Mr. Ayman Abdel
Hamid who started us thinking in object oriented and changed the complete notion
of our programming approach. And now because of that we know how important it is
and how object oriented concepts helps a team at the later stage of software
life cycle where most of the work is required.


Granth has helped us to become software engineers rather than programmers in
the real sense.


(A typical early stage of granth - hold on
anjali
J )




The
Experience



The
first day when we heard about the project Library Management system we formed a
group and the notable thing was we were just acquaintances. We hardly knew each
other. But we all had one thing in common the eagerness to implement what we
have learned in the class, and to make a world class library management system.


srinivas
and we all looking high


The
first meeting


The
first day of our meeting was just our formal introduction and the vision we all
shared for the library management system. Our dream what we want to do what we
want to achieve the goal was set informally. And that day Nivedita (the
most creative person in our team) gave the name GRANTH to our project
(which means a sacred book). And that’s how granth was born. And out of
enthusiasm I devoted a day to create a logo which everybody simply
loved.




Analysis Phase:


We
met and decided to do the project with all our dedication. We started with the
analysis phase given to us where we made some use case diagrams, state diagrams,
and scenarios. Let me tell you that Anjali and Nivedita took the
lead of designing the Scenarios Srinivas , bhaskar and me took the other
responsibilities like class diagram, state diagrams etc. at that time the
documentation we came up with is entirely different what we have now. We learned
in each and every phase. We tend to improve in each and every phase. We made a
strategy a full proof plan by dividing the work


Division of work between
the groups:


Scenarios:
Anjali and Nivedita


Use
case diagrams
:
Anjali and Bhaskar


Class
Diagrams
:
Nivedita and Rajesh


State
Diagram
:
Nivedita and Srinivas


Logo
and Database design
:
Rajesh


Test
Cases/Inspection
:
Srinivas and Bhaskar


Follow
up
:
Entire Team of granth


every
thing went like a clock work , After so many hours of days and night . during
the phase. we completed the phase .


Nivedita thinking hard on Objects Granth
J


Design Phase:


Okay,
let me continue then we were given the design phase where we made the sequence
diagrams, detail design, detailed class diagram etc. By this time we were
knowing each other and now we were buddies. and during this time we all were
spending a lot of time on trying to get the idea of our the object oriented
concept is applied to the real world application. It took a real tough time to
start thinking in Object oriented.


Because
most of us has experience in procedural programming. and that was real hard time
when at every stage we used to get confused why objects and what is the
implementation, And a lot of things we were doing in the design phase we
didn’t had the slightest idea about its implementation and how we will be able
to do it.


During
this phase we knew Bhaskar better, Who speaks the least among us but
whose Quality of work was so consistent that you can rely on him
completely.


Rajesh,
we got everything for the design?



Distribution


Sequence diagrams:
Anjali, Bhaskar


Detail Class Diagram:
Rajesh


Detail design: Nivedita,
Anjali


Client object: Nivedita,
Rajesh


Written report of
inspection teams: bhaskar, srinivas.


Follow up : Entire
team


Black box test
cases:


Then
came up the test cases where we came up with the black box test cases and
functional analysis. Black box test case was all about bhaskar, he was
the leader for this phase we all were following him. Srinivas was
took the active responsibility in this stage.


This was the foundation
of the coming applications we tried to identify each and every equivalence
classes and each test cases and all the possible range for all the inputs and
outputs and A regression analysis testing was done by bhaskar. the consistency
of Bhaskar’s quality work was remarkable


Entire team of granth.
But final done by bhaskar and srinivas.


Bhaskar
you are coming too hard on Granth



(Testing ………….)


We also made a blue
print of how we are going to implement all the test cases in a modular
way.


Implementation and
Integration phase:


This was the most
crucial stage of the Granth when we all first decided the language the platform
and the database. After a lot of discussion and looking into all the pros and
cons we came to conclusion to try the new technology ASP.NET and C# with
Microsoft SQL server as database. since it was supposed to be a rapid
development tool. When srinivas also tested the Mono Compiler for C #
cross platform compatibility. we were sure that we are going in the right
track.


The best performer here
was Anjali, knowing a little bit of .net myself I was suppose to learn as
well as guide everybody what to learn and how to implement things. But the
constraint of time as well as quality needed more people to dive into .Net
technologies and there came the anjali into picture. Her total dedication
and quick learning ability had surpassed all of us. in just few days she was
able to not just know all the technical details but was smoothly started making
classes and became quite comfortable with the whole environment.



.Net was just a hand away but it was not easy


That was a real boost up
for the team now we had two people knowing .net. Then we all again decided
together how exactly the classes will be implemented based on our previous phase
documents. this particular step took a bit of time when we made a transition
from the studies we have done until now and implementing into a programming
language in an object oriented way. after this work was distributed into slots.
Nivedita, Bhaskar and srinivas took responsibilities of
different classes. I was mostly working on things which needed some research and
which took more time and anjali was handling all the coding for whole of the
project.


During this time
the most remarkable thing was our friendship from mere classmates we have became
best friends , we were spending 12 hrs atleast every day on Granth all of us
together.


Who said we never
fought?


There were time when we
had friction among each other like I used to give more stress on User Interface
and Anjali wanted me to put time on functionality we used to fight like
kids. When some of the Nivedita’s brain swinging ideas resulted in, we
all busy arguing for hrs.


We agreed to disagree
J


there were even times
when we used to fight with each other over Linux and Windows the famous
Microsoft and Anti-microsoft platform wars. Where our Linux guru and geek
Srinivas was in the Anti Microsoft side and me leading the Microsoft
team. Our conversation were very educating for both and we respected each others
opinion.


Final
Documentation:


Hurry
up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


No time now for any
documentation or preparation for presentation. Last few days we have to divide
the work no time for any strategies. Nivedita back tracking and
re-correcting the use cases and Scenarios, Srinivas working on the user
manual and the administrator manual, anjali busy implementing validation
controls in each user interface and testing each of them. Bhaskar Testing
finally and working closely with anjali preparing for the power point
presentation adding each and every quality points. myself creating the setup for
the project taking the backup of the database, creating Installation manual and
Read me file.. Hurry up every body we were working from 1st evening
and this scene was at 2nd morning 6:00 o clock . 3 hrs to go for the
presentation. documents still not ready.


Anjali what
about the validations – done, srinivas user manual is looking very professional,
Nivedita each and every particulars taken care. bhaskar ready with the
PowerPoint as well as final test cases me ready with the setup installation file
and DB in a Disk. whats the time now, oops its already 9:25 Run
!!!!!!!!!


we are in the class 5
minutes late at the last moment decided srinivas can go ahead and give the ppt
presentation and me the demo of the application. we all were into granth for so
many days that we all knew each and every details of the project so it doesn’t
matter who gave the demo. We were happy.


Granth will be able to come
up to mark ?



Now that’s what we call
a Life time experience
J









Thank you


The Granth
Team.


Group 2







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Wednesday, February 2, 2005

There Really is Another Way

Winnie the pooh


"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his
head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of
coming downstairs, but


sometimes he feels that there really is another way,


if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it"

- AA Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh"

Labels: , ,

A Common Place Diary

A Common place Diary is a record of things, we have heard and want to remember:
a proverb, a remark by a writer of unusual sensibility, a witty or wise saying,
or even silly or foolish or crass.


commonplace book abstract art


Simply Copying well-expressed sentence is one way of Learning to write.


In struggling to say what we are, we become what we say


By - Thomas S. Kane excerpts from The New Oxford Guide to Writing

Labels: ,

Yours Truly


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