All change

24 February 2012

I guess I will be writing these bi-weekly so that I have something to say and time to say it!

Ph.D. Reporting System

A system was required so that our Ph.D. Students could report upon their current monthly progress and allow a way for them to store information about meetings they have held with the students they supervise. For this I have built 2 systems, one for the P.h.D. students and an administration system for their faculty supervisors.

Both systems are delivered via our Portal which allows for secure single sign on to all of our internal business systems.

Technology used: Java, JSP, HTML5, CSS, Javascript

Volunteer System

The London Business School has a very active Volunteer community. They go out into the wider community and provide help and support for a whole range of people and good causes. I have felt inspired by the effort these people put into help others. Therefore in my spare time I have decided to build a small system for the volunteers to enable them to manage the various opportunities and provide a way for the volunteers to see what others are doing. It is my small way of trying to thank these people. Unfortunately due to my heavy workload / family commitments I do not have a consistent time block that I can provide (unless 5am is ok lol).

Technology used: Java, JSP, HTML5, CSS, Javascript

Gateway Payment Interface

Our .NET team are currently working on a Gateway Payment Interface. The current phase of the project is divided into 5 sprints and they were potentially falling behind schedule. Therefore I have been moved over to the .NET world to lend a hand to get the project back on target.

The first task was to get the UI working in a nicer way. For this I used jQuery which makes it very simple to add those nice slick UI features our users are so hungry for.

The second task was to write export routines for various transactions such as Direct Debits. These exports are then imported into the company accounts system. After giving this some thought I decided to build some simple POCO objects representing each of the transaction types. I then built my own custom annotations and used these to annotate the POCO's. 

Finally I built a general export class which uses reflection to process the generic lists of objects and output them in a format specified.

Technology used: C#, .NET, jQuery, Javascript, HTML5, CSS, Aptana Stuido 3

Current research

I have been looking at the jQuery reference this week to help with the GPI project mentioned above. I also learned how to write custom annotations for C# .NET, which was amazingly simple.

To help with authoring I have just got the latest version of Aptana 3 studio (which is actually based upon eclipse). I have used Apatana in its previous incarnations but version 3 is a real improvemnt and has really boosted my productivity. Aptana

The blog continues

I have been meaning to get back round to keeping this up to date. So here goes...

For week ending 10 February 2011

It has been an incredibly busy period, I have been working on so many projects.

London Business School Facebook Pages

I am quite proud of these, here is the link: London Business School Welcome page on Facebook

This took quite a lot of work and was produced over a weekend. I was told about it Friday at 16:30 to go live at 12:00 Monday. The marketing team are taking me to lunch for this, so it is nice to be appreciated.

In addition I also helped to build this page on our website Our social media networks

London Business School Alumni Reunion 2012

Every year the school holds a reunion for the Alumni, this is a great opportunity for them to meet other Alumni and network with others who are the top of their field.

Technologies used

Java, HTML5, CSS, Javascript

Current research

I am currently studying building Web services using Spring Web Services for the upcoming huge project of redeveloping http://www.london.edu

Cloud Computing, Blade Spring time and Visa's

Cloud Computing

The last few weeks I have been investigating Cloud Computing and what it is going to mean to me as a developer.

“It’s one of the foundations of the next generation of
computing. . .. It’s a world where the network is the platform
for all computing, where everything we think of as
a computer today is just a device that connects to the big
computer we’re building. Cloud computing is a great way
to think about how we’ll deliver computing services in the
future.”
—Tim O’Reilly, CEO, O’Reilly Media

I think this quote best sums up what it will mean to us all. Many articles that I have read are either full of marketing hype or academic theory which go into huge depth about how cloud computing will be implemented and how it will change the world.

Quite a good introduction can be found here: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/579826

What I am interested in as a developer is the glue which will join together the marketing hype with all that the theory promises.

In my job I develop mainly in Java so initially I am going to be investigating this from that perspective, although really the language we implement this in is of no consequence to our user, all they care about is they get to the information they want when they want it.

So in the upcoming months I will be researching Cloud Computing in general and various technologies that will be part of the Cloud development solution:

• Java CAPS - Composite Application Platform Suite, this is Sun's take on the way forward for developing for the cloud environment. http://developers.sun.com/javacaps/index.jsp
  
• REST - Representational State Transfer a collection of network architecture principals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
• Hadoop - Apache Hadoop Core is a software platform that lets one easily write and run applications that process vast amounts of data. It also has one of the strangest names for a platform, but lets hope that doesn't get in the way of its success. http://hadoop.apache.org/core/

I think as a developer the big guns will work upon frameworks that will hide the complexities of the cloud's resources and give us great power to exploit them. The cloud to us will just be a resource that we can call upon to provide us with enough processing power and storage capacity to tackle any problem very fast, but the age old problem will remain does the end result meet the user's needs.

To be continued...

Blade Spring Time

Blade is my own personal CASE tool, I develop it in my spare time to make my job easier, my code output faster and produce higher quality products.

It already has the following features:

• Code Builder - This is the core function and enables me to write code hundreds of times faster than my little fingers can and without typos.
• Project Manager - This helps me manage my projects and keep track of documentation, user requirements through to testing.
• Template manager - This is really a sub function for the code builder which enables me to add code templates.
• Knowledge Manager - A store for articles and various bits of knowledge I come across during my work/research.
• Language Manager - Another sub function of the code builder which enables me to teach Blade the various languages and technologies.
  
• SQL Builder - SQL tool to help build the database side that much faster.
• CSS Builder - CSS tool which will be integrated into the code builder when I feel inclined, but for now it will serve as a quick reference.

There is a lot more to it than I can describe here but the above is a brief summary.

This week I have decided to add Spring to the code builder. The first task is going to be write a feature into the code builder for writing the XML configuration files or "wiring" as it is called. I already have an XML tool so I plan to start from there. The goal will be to come up with some easy visual way to construct this so that all I need to think about is what I want to do.

Visa's

The last couple of weeks at work have been hectic. The government in its infinite wisdom decided to bring in a law for April 2009, with regard to immigrant students, which tightens up how they are dealt with when entering the UK to study here.

The pressure was really on in this project as the specification was not finalised until 30 March and the project was to be live for 6 April. The main reason being that the law was not finalised until March!

I did meet the deadline but it was difficult to build from scratch and test in such a short space of time. Definitely the shortest project I have worked on professionally.

Well that's enough for this week, Easter is here!!!