Yesdatabas Team Void Main

Team Members Daniel MeteyerMichael MartinCorey McClymondsPatrick Stetter

Summary  Yesdatabas is a fully customizable Content Management System  Written in Ruby on Rails  Intended to be used for clubs and other small organizations to maintain and update member data  First implementation will be with RPI’s Red and White club  Project took around 13 weeks  Used the Unified Process for software development

MVC Architecture Model/View/Controller

Design Pattern Selection  Yesdatabas uses Ruby on Rails  Ruby on Rails uses the MVC design pattern  Model  Describes data storage and relations  View  Presents data found in the model in a view for users  Controller  Manipulates data found in the model according to instructions from the software and user  Selected before we even knew what design patterns were  By choosing Ruby on Rails as our language/environment!  Made development easier  Ruby generates views and controllers based on the model creation  Concept called scaffolding

Unified Process 4 Stages of Development

Inception – Getting the Ball Rolling  Our Vision  Easily navigable and secure website  Functionality for exportation (to a format readable by Excel)  Two actors  Users who only view and control their own data  Administrators who create users, manage data fields and edit user data when necessary  A database to store all of user data  Customizable design i.e., fonts, colors, formatting, etc.  Compatible with RPI’s web servers  A big risk for our project  Accomplishments  Set up Ruby environment and created a new project  Obstacles  Finding time to meet around busy schedules

Elaboration – Building a Foundation  Vision  A somewhat functional website  Accomplishments  Finalized Use Cases  Began diagramming our system  Experimented with Ruby  Very straight forward  Improved level of communication  Bi-weekly meetings  Formerly just weekly  Obstacles  Overcoming Spring Break slump  Getting our hands dirty with code

Construction – Cranking it Out  Vision  Functional beta release deliverable by the deadline  Accomplishments  Implemented most required features  Completed class and sequence diagrams  Coded on our own time  Not at meetings  Designed a relevant test plan  Manual step-by-step testing of the CMS  Obstacles  Integrating all the controllers  Adding features in a manner consistent with our Use Cases  Code reviewed by team Thoughtbean  Provided honest and helpful criticism  Helped us realize that our code needed commenting and tidying up

Transition – Wrapping Things Up  Vision  Fully functioning content management system  Accomplishments  Worked out all the bugs  Created user documentation  Ruby on Rails installation  Yesdatabas installation  Using our software  Reviewed final test results  Secure and functional!  Presentable  Obstacles  Completing deliverables while working on the presentation

Yesdatabas in Depth Further Explanation with Live Demo

SVN History  Insert Video of SVN History

Benefits Of Our Software  Installable  Instructions found in documentation  Minimal command line statements to get running  Customizable  Uploading a CSS to match your organization’s colors  Flexible  Custom data fields  Compatible  With RPI’s web server  Lightweight  Software takes roughly 2MB of disk space  Modifiable  Future updates likely

Best Practices – How They Helped  Google Code  Wiki  Posting project notes  Rough draft of deliverables  Links to resources  Repository  Pulling latest version of software  Committing work  Bug tracking  Posted bugs we identified  More convenient than using discussions  Coding Standards  Made code easy to read for our team and others who reviewed it  Third Party Tool  B-crypt allowed use to make our password storage secure  Design Pattern  Better than developing entirely from scratch  Kept us focused  What the user model was and was not  How we ought to view user data  How the data ought to be controlled through the view

Live Demonstration

Conclusion Final Thoughts

What We Learned  Mistakes Made  Tried to use our own phases/iteration schedule  Did not work  Switched to the suggested class schedule in April  Jumped the gun on some Ruby coding  Could have taken more time familiarize with naming conventions  All naming problems eventually fixed  Lessons Learned  Software development encompasses much more than programming  Without direction, a project is doomed to fail  Organization and deadlines are crucial to success  Communication is essential for teamwork  Honesty with teammates and managers is important  In this case, replace managers with instructors/TA’s  Diagramming with UML can be fun!

Future of Yesdatabas  Add an alumnus account  Can view all user data but may not modify it  Embed a Google Calendar  Put on homepage  Use for your organization’s events  Implement Attendance functionality  Record meeting attendance for members/users  Generate attendance reports

Thanks for Listening! Team Void Main