maulin

Blogging in Bit 320

I was aware of the blogging community, which is developing majorly over the internet all around the world, before taking BIT 320 but only actually got involved in one of these communities after taking this class. I feel that this was one of the biggest and most useful tool we were introduced to us in this class. I personally think that blogging in this class helped us all get more involved with every one else in the class and share our thoughts on a variety of subjects. It specially played a major role in helping us overcome difficulties we had in the class like understanding the material, dealing with project issues etc. It was a way of sharing "knowledge" among everyone taking the class. I used it mainly for finding answers to many queries I had regarding various topics in the class. I feel the blogging tools used in this class was really good and I wouldnt change it at all. The blogosphere could be collaborated with some other blogging communities out there dealing with topics discussed in class. I came across several blogs about various programming languages which I found very helpful. If the blogosphere included other non-BIT 320 people that talked about topics similar to what is discussed among us, I think it would further enhance the use of the blogosphere. After blogging in this class and listening to the advantages of blogs from Bud and the key speakers, I can see blogging being used very heavily in the future. I feel it is an upcoming powerful tool like email too share information and knowledge.

Some formatting questions

Well now that we have the forms functioning, I think the end is really close. However, we have been having a couple of problems in formatting our outputs. One of the problem is formatting the tables in the report pages. How can we center the tables, format the tables, change the font etc since the tables are called from a stylesheet? Also, we have been trying to put up a "thank you" page on the click of the submit button. When we placed the piece of code in the right place the plage did come out but then the form does not connect to the database. I haven't been successful to get both of them to work. Could you advise what I could be doing wrong?

wierd characters still unsolved

So Bud gave me a line of code which removes the wierd characters I get on my query pages but It doesnt seem to be working for me. I may be putting it in the wrong place. I tried putting it in the Orders.xsl page which is called by the query page and it did not work.I tried putting it right after the template match = 'OrdersDetail' line of code. I also tried putting it at various points of the query5.xsl page but this totally ruined the output. Could you please tell me where exactly that line of code should be placed?

wierd characters in my query result

We got all our queries to display on the web but for some reason one of the query results has some additional 0:0:0 under each row displayed. If the result is viewed in SQL it comes out perfectly fine without any junk. I dont know where, why and how this is coming up in our result. Bud said something about some code was required to remove that. Where will that code go in my existing XSQL page? The query result can be seen here.

More questions on Project 2

So now that the basics of project 2 have been done, i was looking at the project requirements and did not exactly understand some of the requirements that were posted. One of them was about having HTML mock-up's for pages not implemented. What exactly must these HTML mock-up pages contain? Are they supposed to display the views of the queries which have not been converted to HTML using XSLT? I also showed a couple of our HTML pages to Bud and he said that we must do more on the page than just display the queries. Does he mean that it must look better as in add some backgrounds and titles and all those frills or some more functionalilty? Also, has anyone else implemented RSS on their project?

implementing RSS

So now I was trying to implement RSS into our project. We have the file converted to HTML using XSLT and it publishes on the web at http://elab-linux4.bus.umich.edu:8080/%7Emaulinc/Project2/query1.xsql . I did a little research on the web to try to find how we could implement RSS into our project and it looks relatively easy. From what i read in one of the article i found, all we had to do is include a certain dtd into our xml file and few other tags. I followed the process shown on the source but I dont think I have been really that successful. I am sure I think I am missing some minor technicalities like an unspecified tag or wrong link. I am also confused where the </rdf:RDF> tag comes. Does it come write after the definition or at the end of the file. In an example i saw, it was placed at the end. However, it did not work that way. I guess I will have to work a little more on this and see how if I can figure it out. If any one has some helpful resources, i would greatly appreciate it.

Class on the 24th

Well I missed class on the 24th right before thanksgiving. I was wondering what we did in class that day apart from what was scheduled. Was there any important points Bud made? How hard is it to add data into a database via webpages? I also wanted to know if anyone had thought or tried implementing RSS into their projects. I dont know how to get about starting that.

Stage 2 on Project 2 COMPLETE!!!!

So we finally got over another obstacle in our quest of completing project 2. It was pretty tricky and there were many minor things which were overlooked and with some guidance from Bud, we finally achieved it. Some recommendations to every one working on the project:

Remember to include all the files i.e. the .xml files of your queries in the webapps directory. This is necessary since we are trying to display our queries on the web

Include the root.xsl, SimpleTable.xsl and cis320.css files in the main directory from where you are accessing and running your .xml files. I overlooked this and definitely came across very wierd errors like "could not display the XMl page" etc. 

I also understood the whole process of the tags written in the root element file. Turns out that as displayed in customerHtml.xsl, the tag where it directs the file to match the template, the root element will have to be defined for every different query file which you are trying to display.

I feel the best way to learn all this is getting started on the project cause there are several errors that are encountered and overcoming these problems helps understand the whole process of XML to HTML

progress on Project 2

So we finally got those xsql pages to work. honestly i dont think it was bad. In fact once we got the first query to work, it was a piece of cake for the rest of them. I definitely got a better understanding on the working of XML while working on the project. Some questions came up regarding the rowset element and row elements which Bud clarified for me. He said we should start working on converting our XML to HTML using XSLT. I feel that working on the project made me understand what was going on in class a little better. I was definintely lost in class before we started working on the project but now it all seems clearer. Hopefully the second leg of the project will be as simple to understand and implement as the first part.

going about project 2

So now that we have started practicing XSLT in class, I think we have covered some part of the material required for project 2. So now my question is how exactly should we go about starting project 2. I know we have to use the database we created in project 1 and we have to publish some views of our database on the web. So we have to use XSQL to create XML and after that we have to use XSLT to publish XML on the web using HTML. My main question is if we plan to start working on the project this week, where should we start? Whata should our initial goal be? Should we aim to just get our queries into XML?

Another question regarding project 2 is about the form which is a requirement for the project. Now, i know the form is supposed to take in inputs from the user and do something with those inputs. My question is, what are those inputs supposed to be? Should the form be able to take in queries by the user and then display the result of those queries?

For now i think these are the main questions I have for the project. I guess when we start working on the project we will have some more questions.