Gaz Smith

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since Jan 25, 2004
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Recent posts by Gaz Smith

Well would you believe it. Got my result today after 8 days!

I'm a united (manchester) fan too and I've got �50 extra in my pocket after last nights fantastic game. I've lost my voice and I'm grinning like an idiot at the moment!


This report shows the total 1.4 SCJD points that could have been awarded in each section, and the actual number of points you were awarded. This is provided to give you per-section feedback on your strengths. The maximum possible score is 400; the minimum to pass is 320.
General Considerations (maximum = 100): 100
Documentation (maximum = 70): 70
O-O Design (maximum = 30): 30
GUI (maximum = 40): 37
Locking (maximum = 80): 44
Data store (maximum = 40): 40
Network server (maximum = 40): 40



Back to the cert I got the famous 44/80. It think this is probably to do with my locking not working well in all cases. I think there is another thread open on this at the moment but I'd reiterate Andrew's advice about checking that the locking works in all cases and not just those that are required for the assignment. i.e. creating records and orphaned locks etc..

I think my client GUI was up to scratch so i doubt the 3 points lost in that area are for that. I didn't provide a server GUI to stop and start the server although I did provide a dialog for configuration of the server. If the user wanted to stop the server they had to use ctrl^c or close the command window. That's where I think the 3 points went. No drama at any rate.

Overall I'm very happy with the result and dare I say pleased to be moving on to something new even though I've learned lots. I've had the assignment for just less than a year although my effort on it has ebbed and flowed. I guess many can associate with this!

The last thing to say is that I have benefited in so many ways from this forum and I'd like to say thanks to everyone involved especially the moderators that make it all work so well.

I've waited 4 days so far!

I share your impatience.. :roll:

It is contradicting itself.



..and not for the first time I'm sure you'll agree! :roll:

I think this is the 'common sense' solution though. You could even document the decision to document!

p.s. I'm currently reading Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. It's a good read that encourages the development of self describing code. i.e. Only put comments (non-javadoc) where necessary for clarity and if they're needed at all then the first step is probably to assess why the code is so complex as to not be readable. Bit off subject but this reminded me of it
The following is from the documentation sub-section within the Application Overview of my instructions.

The code itself should be as clear as possible; do not provide comments that do not add to the comprehensibility of the code. Awkward or complex code should have descriptive comments, and javadoc style comments must be used for each element of the public interface of each class. You must create a full suite of documentation for the classes of the completed project. This must be generated using the tool "javadoc" and must be in HTML format. Provide javadoc documentation for all classes you write...



I think commenting the 'public interface' is the way forward :-)
Javini,


However, at least one very recent exam had one sentence in the assignment
which clearly suggested that the DataAccess interface methods be invoked
by the client-side software.


Out of interest can you tell us what this sentence was?
Just to stir thinks up a bit... :roll:
My create method doesn't throw a RecordNotFoundException, only DuplicateKeyException
My findByCriteria method throws no checked exceptions at all.(such as RecordNotFoundException)
As a result I went for option 2. I decided it was better to take a consistent approach and so I catch the IOExceptions and re-throw my own subclass of RuntimeException chained with the IOException. This can then be extracted as and when. Obviously this is documented.(which seems to be the key point whichever option you choose! )
thanks george.
i agree with you.
now that my posting 'viginity' is lost i'm sure you'll be hearing from me again in the not too distant future ;-)
I've also been pondering the unique cookie issue recently. I've read various threads that discuss the use of
1. The system time. This is flawed in some instances since sequential calls to System.currentTimeMillis() can return the same value.
2. A random number generator. Can also return the same number although clearly the chance is probably suitably remote for these requirements.
3. An incremental integer. As suggested above. The two obvious drawbacks seem to be, that it offers no security since the cookie can easily be guessed (although is security in anyway a requirement?) and two the counter will eventually wrap and cause you problems.
I prefer the idea of 3 since it wouldn;t be hard to justify the lack of security in this spec. I was thinking however of using a stack instead of a simple incremental counter. This way cookies are returned once they're finished with and it's unlikely you'll run out of cookies this way (c.f. counter wrap).
Any thoughts?
p.s. This forum has been a god send. I've been lurking for a while but simply haven't needed to post since I've been able to find sufficient detail from past posts! Just like to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone involved.