Apache Derby up and running

So we've got a Derby database up and running now, finally something to play with. Derby was quite interresting, especially since the syntax seemed real "old school" ( SQL-92). Now the work is concentrated on building a starter DAO so that plugins can communicate with the database through this DAO.

Plugins connect to the database using DAO, which in order uses the Derby EmbeddedDriver to connect to the database. This way the database system will be abstracted from the rest of the system.

Derby seems really smooth to work with, as it also generates a very small footprint. I've spent four weeks now reading Derby documentation, so I hope we won't have to throw it out the door in favour for another one :P

Yar ! Shiver me timbers !

Me took the pirate test today, the result was

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

I don't like Mondays

Ouch, this is one of those Mondays that you would think only was a rumor.....
*I'm tired
*I'm freezing
*The store outside my job is sold out of canned Coke and it's too far to walk to the next one
*I've been unlucky with my choice of clothes/footwear today - the result is that I get this "funny" electric shock each time I touch a metal object. At my workplace - all the doorknobs are made of metal and I have to pass a total of 8 doors to get my hourly cup of coffee ..
*Some system we rely on at work is down,- so today I am stuck with doing monkey work. Meanwhile the pending work load is continously growing larger for each hour the system is down.
*I thought I had money, but when I checked my bank account I became aware of the fact that I had some bills that were due for payment today, and this morning 200$ has been automagically abducted from my account.

...... and it's barely passed 11:00 am yet, I can't wait to see what happens next

Filthy thieves

I've until now been very proud of being a landowner in Florida. To be exact, I've owned 1 square inch of land. Now I don't have that land anymore.....

The Ten Commandments v2.0 ( g33kz 0n1y )

This has really nothing to do with the project, I just thought that it was time to rewrite the Ten Commandments so they suit the modern times. Hope no-one gets offended by this.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before 127.0.0.1
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, or that is proprietary copyrighted material. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and bug them with ridiculously lawsuits for copyright infringement; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, nor take the name of registered trademarks; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain and the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them should expect to be bugged with ridiculously large infringement claims.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy and cure your hangover. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work, and on the sixth evening tough shalt party like it was the end of days: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother and the original authors of the sourcecode thou are implementing in thy software: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
6. Thou shalt not kill, nor perform DOS attacks.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery nor "toying around" with fancy operating systems other than thy beloved one.
8. Thou shalt not steal or download copyrighed material.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour nor misuse his unsecured wireless network.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his computer, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

So far, so good. I've managed to complete the myPal framework test. The whole point was to create an out-of-the-box implementation that myPal could be built on. With this, I mean that if the group decides that we should use this framework, we can use myPal-FWT without having to modify it. Reverse engineering is always fun, and I've had two frustrating weeks now. I took JPF-Demo, and removed all application specific code until I was left with the framework and the code that initiates the first main window.

The application is ready to accept three plugins: org.mypal.email, org.mypal.mycal and org.mypal.manager. With this, the path for the forst release is set: Email, Calendar and contact management functionality. The first release will not include a backend server, nor any possibilities to add myPal contacts, so Contact Managers functionality for the first release will be more like an adress book for the email client.

To take a look at the code, you can visit myPal project page and browse CVS

New approach to the framework

Started a new approach to the framework yesterday. Turns out it was a successful one. Insted of trying to build an application from scratch using the demo that comes with JPF, I decided to first implement my own plugins into JPF-Demo, and when that works properly I will start removing and customizing the rest until it's a clean plugin ready to build myPal on. The framework will still have to require approval in the group, but time will show

Arrrr, ye framework not work for me, aye ?

Shiver me timbers ! I am starting to agree with this lad.

Framework, modules and plugins.

It's been a long time since last post now. That's mainly because I've had my hands full of other things I had to do. When it comes to myPal I've used the last weeks to find out more about how to create a usable framework for the application. This has not been an easy task as I must admit that I have no clue about how to build one or what to search for. I felt like a blind man in the forest. I have lost the count of how many ".NET framework", "Mozilla Framework" and "Web application framework" sites I have found during the search.

Lucky as I am, I have managed to find an Open Source project, Java Plugin Framework we can build myPal on. The team has not yet decided if we should use this or not, but I believe it is a very good solution. Saves us a lot of work too... I've got a very good feeling about JPF, since developing myPal as plugins and extensions; we can modify myPal in a thousand ways later on. One example could be to make myPal skinnable. By creating the GUI as extensions, we can later on add as many extensions of this type as we like, and then let the user choose between different skins ( of course, the skin chooser will be a dynamically driven module, giving the user choices based on the amount of installed skins).

We have decided to use the Model-View-Controller pattern for developing myPal. By separating the Model and View into different modules, it will be possible to change the whole myPal user interface, just by adding or replacing an extension. myPal has grown a lot bigger than my original idea. But I am not complaining. Every idea, even the rejected ones, that comes from the developer team brings myPal one step closer to greatness. Making myPal a pluggable application is one of those.

For the upcoming days, I guess most of my myPal-time will be used on creating a small test application to see how we can use the framework. So, Cheers for now.

Page update

Finally, myPal Home has got an acceptable layout. The design is no longer ugly and Internet Explorer users can scroll the page now. That was not possible before. Stupid IE .Stupid M$, not giving Internet Explorer a proper update in almost five years. Anyway, I found out that struggling and cursing over non-functional CSS layouts was nothing for me, so I decided to implement an Open Source webdesign. Open Source saves the day again. The design was pretty smooth. It was simple. If some of you have read abit of what I have written about myPal, the application is going to be as smooth and simple you just gotta love it. I felt a simple design on the homepage would match out project.
I also added new forums to the homepage. The old forums at sf.net got quite messy, and as an administrator I actually had very few administrative rights. I could hide a forum by marking it as deleted, I could add/rename forums and I could restrict people outside the project group from accessing a forum, but that was about all my administrative rights. By adding a new forum now that we "own" we have full control. Every one can contribute to the discussion if they want, but we have a Developer Zone where only developers of myPal project can enter. I hope it will be easier to keep these forums tidy.
Cheers