Help Please

[Nicholas Lefebvre]

I need some help with a program that will test the maths of grade 1,2,3. The program is for grade 10 IT

The other specs are that it must:
1. Have admin,teacher and student accounts.
2. Provide feed back on tests and exercises that the program gives the students.
3. A easy to understand GUI for the tests and exercises.
4. Report on marks and progress of each student to teacher and parents(by email).
5. Access database connected to the program.
6. The option for a teacher to add tests and exercises easily without having to change the code.
7. Usernames,Passwords,Student name and surname,Parent name and surname, teacher's name and the parents contact details must all be encrypted.
8. The program should be easy to use.
9. Should use icons where possible.
10. To be able to add and remove students and teachers.


My problems are:
1. Encrypting the username and surname for each account.
2. Connecting to a access database with java.
3. Setting up admin,teacher and student accounts
4. Report on marks and progress of each student to teacher and parents by email

If someone could explain and give me an example of the 4 things i am having problems with. I would really be grateful.

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Few housekeeping things first:

Welcome to coderanch. Nice to see very young people try their hand at programming. I started playing around with programming in grade 8, and hearing about other kids do it brings up some nostalgia

You posted in the wrong forum. THis is a general Java question. I'll move your post there

[Nicholas Lefebvre]

Oh sorry.I never knew which to post it in.So i guessed.

I find programming very interesting and fun since i first did it.Thanks for moving it.

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Ok, now to try to answer your questions. Your questions are a little broad, and I would like to address them not in the order that you asked, but in the order that I think you should approach the problem

there are a few high level questions that you need to ask before you get into the details

1) Is this a multi-user application or a single user? Will it be used by multiple people at school and data should be shared across prople, or each person will have their standalone copy of the data
2) DO you want this to be a web application or a installed app
3) Does it need to be integerated with your school's security. DO you want single sign on between the school's login and your app's login?
4) How many people will access it? How is the database hosted? Is it on the school's network?
5) DO you have an idea of what the UI will look like? Are you designing it? or someone else designing

Now, the requirements that you posted are for a full fledged application. I would think an experienced programmer would take atleast 6-8 weeks to do this. You probably have a huge learning curve, and will take much longer than that. Are you prepared for a large commitment? Also, I wouldn't approach such a big application in one go. I would break the app into differrent parts and approach them one by one. For example, just work on making a page where you enter the students names.. then teachers names.. then add functionality to enter tests. Go step by step. That's one of the fundamental skills that you can learn:- how to break your problem into pieces

Also, from your questions, it sounds like you do not know how to have a java program access database. I would look up the JDBC API and go through tutorials and/or any materials that you can get your hands on. ALso, you might want to read up on database design, and how to write SQL.

[Nicholas Lefebvre]

It will be multiple users.It needs to be seperate login.

I would like to try a web based application since we can choose with it is an application or web based app.

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Ok, then you need to learn the following stack of technologies

1) SQL
2) JDBC
3) Servlets & JSP

Don't worry about encryption for now. A lot of databases allow you to encrypt data while storing in database, and you can use the features provided by the database. You don;t need to reinvent the wheel.

[Nicholas Lefebvre]

If i was to make it an application what would i need to learn then.
Just so i can i have a informed dission