All,
Thanks for the wishes. Alex, as for my assignment,
* I used RMI for the networking part.
* For the locking, I used a synchronized hashmap and maintained a tuple of the
thread and the record that it locks. I used the record position as the primary key.
* Used java.util.logging to log all error/info statements. This logs to a file in the current working directory as well as to the console.
* I actually lost some marks in GUI section. Actually, I thought my GUI was one area where I had done pretty well. It was not to be. One reason could be that, when my gui closed, I did not provide the confirmation ("Do you want to close? ", "Yes", "No") dialogue. I think this is one of the standard features provided by most guis.
* Documentation takes a lot of time. More than I had anticipated. I gave an html as well as txt version of choice.txt. I feel html version is more readable as the formatting is better.
* To demonstrate that locking works as intended, I used print (by way of logger) around the wait() statement in the code.
* Since, I had the URLyBird assignment, I implemented the 48 hour rule as an option to be enabled and disabled by the user at start-up. This way you play it safe.
*
Test your assignment on more than one machine (which run the same brand of OS). I did and found a bug. I also managed to test (more of a verification) on Unix (and over a network)out of sheer curiosity.
* My essay exam went the whole distance. I consumed all of 2 hours. I think it is a good idea to be descriptive and verbose in the essay exam as it is the best time to pitch-fork your hard work.
This forum has an amazing wealth of information on most of the topics concerned to certification. So, dig deep to leverage that. The only thing I was worried about was the auto-failure. In the end I am happy, I was not a victim of one. The certification consumes quite a bit of time. More so when you are working full time. But the upside of it is that you learn a lot of new things in terms of technology and implementation techniques and it adds a new dimension to your knowledge. It enhances the creativity quotient. As most of the ranchers do, I studied Max's book.
HTH.
regards
Vrinda