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Inductive Software Design, Rapid Prototyping and IT
Initiatives
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Institutuional Problem Solving with Web-accessible Databases,
Tool-based Software Architecture and something new:
Crafting Software Inductively
We are evolving a
paradigm for enterprise data
management based on providing GMS students, faculty and staff with
a software infrastructure composed of web-based tools
that enable them to solve their own
problems as effectively away from their desk as when they are at their desk.
The main idea is to build an internet-centric
problem solving workspace from tools
(both open source and proprietary).
Our approach is based on constructing this workspace on top of an IT software
infrastructure that promotes access to information resources
(through our web portal, http://teamgms.gms.edu.sg/worktable) ,
convenient transport of data from
repositories to your desktop and
rapid prototyping of browser-accessible applications.
Our approach is client-centric, problem-driven, tool-based and
reflects our committment to creating an infrastructure that provides
seamless transport of information between any two points.
Instead of enterprise-wide systems,
we are addressing institutional data management
needs with compositions based on web-based tools glued together
with a scripting language. Our
software development strategy is incremental and
based on growing solutions starting with
a simple instance, identifying the tools required to enable the
processes associated with the instance, looking
for common denominators among similar problems and moving on.
In other words, we are identifying instances of problems from which
we can generalize enterprise-like solutions, but from the bottom up
instead of from the top down.
The concept of generalization is critical,
and provides a metric from which we can measure the utility of a solution.
Problem solutions that do not readily generalize are lower priority
than solutions with a large leveraging potential.
Our strategy
is predicated on using industry standard data packaging, transport
and tracking
protocols in order to facilitate coupling (via an interface) of
solutions. The
overall paradigm is based on XML(data packages) + HTTP(data transport) +
SOAP (activation of remote services).
Our tools are designed to address seven critical areas:
Capture key strokes once
A high potential for tool-scripted solution generalization
Package key strokes and displayed data in a portable format
(tab delimited, pdf, XML object, etc)
Transport and track data packages with standard protocols: ftp, http
mySiteMaker a nifty web interface to a database.
Applications designed to be "wrappers" around institutional resources.
The primary objective here is to loosely wrap browser-based applications
around data repositories. Using common interface engines to data
repositories minimizes disruption of applications with system upgrades or
system replacements.
HOWTO make a wrapper, and
basic components of a web applications
Applications designed around the email model of a workflow manager.
Workflow managers provide a mechanism for capturning data and manually
or automatically processing forms-based data.
The workflow monitor facilitates monitoring the flow
of documents around the university, the document service time and
the search for a lost document.
Among our tools are ones designed to facilitate access to and transport from
institutional databases, ones designed to capture data on a form, perhaps
prepopulated with existing data from one or more
enterprise resources: see the
IT Lab toolbox .
In addition - here is a useful suite of tools to build a web interface
to a mySQL database:
mySQL import and here is
an extremely popular
tool for building a browser-based interface to MySQL.
So who crafts these tools? To deal with implementation, I started the
IT Lab and populated it with 7 of the greatest and
friendliest folks in the galaxy - see
myFolks .
The strategy
We select a problem with an end user,
and explore how to solve the problem with existing tools.
If we find some tool is missing, we
develop a new tool, that fits with extending the range of problems we can
solve: thus the inductive component. Emphasis is placed on developing
tools that address more than the immediate problem under investigation
without destroying the one-function:one-tool concept.
One goal is to rapidly prototype
a script in order for the user to determine if the solution is pointed in
the correct direction. In this manner, there is successive refinement of
what the user perceived he/she needs while providing a foundation for
tool use and developoment. Our goal is that when first meeting with
a client, by the end of a session, we will have implemented
a web-accessible prototype of a solution to their problem.
The results
Our data-entry tools are based on PDF and HTML forms
and unix-like filters for electronic signatures, credit card validation,
merging data from a database with a PDF template,
creating tab-delimited records from a submitted PDF form, placing
and extracting data in an HTML and PDF form etc. We use
MySQL as a backend database manager and a number of PHP3 scripts to interface
the user with the database (PHPMySQLadmin etc) . We use JDBC as the primary
database interface with some use of ODBC (when all else fails). We have recentlyfound a neat trick - to change the mime-type of a text file so that it
can be automatically imported, for example, into an excel spread-sheet.
This strategy for moving data is simple, powerful, and requires no special
installations or maintenance. Another triumph for http protocols.
We have build a portal (see
worktable ) to explore distributed content
management of out portal. We have also built a web-page registration
system to facilitate central coordination of web-site integrity while
promoting distributed web site management.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer
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