college work update

WOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!! I PASSED MY EXAMS !!! And done a good job of it too :) Since the exams I have been working hard on the coding part of my assignment. I started by implementing my database design into MySQL and creating all the tables etc. MySQL was installed on my laptop and so was ApacheTomcat and then classpath to all the necessary directories was set up in the environment variables.

I started coding the project in servlets and that was going fine only that it was taking a while to get the pages to the screen. Because if this I looked into other ways I could do this and was then informed about jps. I picked up a few books from the library and went through tutorials online and now I am planning to use servlets and jsp. That way my web pages can be mostly done in jsp which should be a bit faster to develop and with the use of servlets I will be able to add more functionality.

During the coding of the jsp I needed to connect with the mySQL database that I had setup only to realise that the database is completely wrong and had to be redesigned correctly. This took some time and effort but now it is at a point where I am fully satisfied with it. Originally I was not able to create users and supervisor because of constraints that had been created due to the wrong implementation of relationships and attributes, but now this has been rectified.

So up to now the coding I have achieved is:

• database can be populated with users
• students and supervisor details can be inserted
• a functional sign in page with error checking
• access to database for users existence
• access and displays students details on a jsp
• jsp can see what type of user they are and direct them to either the studentPage or supervisorPage

I think that’s it up to now. The most frustrating part of it all was the database as it took a couple of days to finalise. Even trying to get a GUI to enable me to control the database tables etc was an annoyance as most of them failed to deliver a proper service. But I am now using SQLyog Enterprise which I am happy to say that I haven't had any problems with yet :D