Peter Hat

Remote methods can only throw RemoteExceptions.

You then have 2 options:
- Wrap your exception in a RemoteException. (Use 'Cause' in the RemoteException)
- For your own Exceptions, you can let them extend the RemoteException, which will allow your class to throw them without breaching the interface.

Hope that helped.

Don't submit until the day before your essay exam.
I wish I had known that myself. :/

Don't know the questions yet

"Deletes a record, making the record number and associated disk storage available for reuse."

If you just mark it as deleted, the disk space becomes available for reuse by your own program, but you're right that it's not available for other programs.

Just document how you interpret it and what you choose.

Thanks for your replies.

About my questions...
1) Yes, I did make only 1 runnable as this seems to make most sense, but I'm still a bit worried that the requirements says 'programS'.

2) Yes, it does make a lot more sense to specify the location of the server to connect to... But assignment say specify 'Database' and not 'server'. I guess it could mean the same thing, I just assumed that database meant database file.
Hmm... You're probably right.

3) Still not sure about this... Allowing change from local to network seems to be breaking the requirements if they are interpreted strictly.


Thanks for your input... They make a lot of sense.
Though I'm still not 100% sure it fulfills the requirements, I'm getting closer.

The way I read it, it's your choice if you want to hard code the field names or to read them dynamically, and I think both can be ok, as long as you documents what considerations you went through while you reached your decision.

The documentation of your thoughts and reasons for your decisions, is more important than your actual choices, as I understand it.

Hi all.

I'm having trouble understanding some of the requirements in my assignment.

Assignment quotes
1a) "Your programs must not require use of command line arguments other than the single mode flag, which must be supported..."
1b) "...The mode flag must be either "server", indicating the server program must run, "alone", indicating standalone mode, or left out entirely, in which case the network client and gui must run."
2) "...In either case, the program must allow the user to specify the location of the database, and it must also accept an indication that a local database is to be used, in which case, the networking must be bypassed entirely."
3) Your programs must not require use of command line property specifications. All configuration must be done via a GUI, and must be persistent between runs of the program. Such configuration information must be stored in a file called suncertify.properties which must be located in the current working directory.

My questions
1) From the plural tense of "programs" in quote 1, it seems that I'm expected to write (at least) 2 applications. However the command line arguments seems to indicate only 1 application which can run in 3 modes. If I make 2 applications, the 3 command line arguments doesn't make sense as far as I can see.
Am I worrying too much about the plural of 'programs'? Or did I miss something?

2) Quote 2 and 3 say that it must be possible to specify the location of the DB, and if local is chosen no network traffic must occur. Should this be specified in the client GUI, or should I make a server GUI for specifying this?
It would seem more natural to keep GUI out of the server, but on the other
hand, it is the server which handles the DB access, so it would be a bit strange for the clients to be able to specify the DB location.
Unless clients could have separate DB files, so for instance 3 clients could work on 3 different DB files, through 1 server instance? Hmm.. Confusing. :/
No idea how I am supposed to understand these requirements.

3) Quote 1 tells me that the command line arguments controls whether to run standalone or network version. Quote 2 and 3 tells me the same thing should be controlled from the GUI.
If both is implemented, the requirements are actually broken, if a server is running as 'local', and then later changed to non-local, since that would cause it start using the network.
Very confused about this too...


Help needed
I can't imagine a solution which I am sure will not auto-fail.
So I hope some of you will be able to help out, come with ideas or just post how you understand the quoted requirements.