T.E.A.M. SECME

Build Instructions

EEL5881 Software Engineering Fall 2002

Project Name: Project SECME

Team Members:

Contents of this Document

 

General Information :

 

Minority Engineering and Computer Science Program (MECSP) provides support services to prepare, recruit and retain ethnic minority engineering students. In conjunction with a variety of governmental agencies, industries and school systems; the MECSP office develops and implements pre-college programs to assist ethnic minority elementary, middle and high school students to become academically prepared and aware of career opportunities in engineering, science and other math based fields.

 

The purpose of this project is to provide online information to the participating schools about upcoming Saturday workshops, annual competition and other events. It will provide a facility for the schools to register online for the annual competition event and for the workshops. It will also provide a facility for users in the Minority Engineering Program to administer information for these upcoming events and to view information provided by these schools.

 

The proposed system should be able to:

 

1. Enable the school coordinators to log into the system, view the required information and register their schools’ students for the competitions and/or workshops, and also modify the registration at will.

2. Enable the MECSP SECME program organizer to view the registration information in the required format, and update the information on the webpage.

3. Enable the school coordinators and the SECME organizers to review registration information

4. Inform the MECSP organizers whenever data is added or modified, through email.

5. Provide a secure method for the Organizers and the Coordinators to access the system, by using a system of passwords.

 

Java Technology as well as Microsoft Access are what we use to accomplish the presented system.

 

Java Server Pages (JSP) technology is the cross-platform method of generating dynamic content for the web.

The reason why we used JSP is because it is easy to learn and in that way allows developers to quickly produce web sites in an open and standard way. JSP is based on Java, an object oriented language. JSP produces a robust platform for web development.

 

Java Beans is a special type of class that has a number of methods. The JSP page can call these methods so can leave most of the code in these Javabeans.

By using this technology, we can make a feedback form that automatically sent out email. By having a JSP page with a form, when the visitor presses the submit button this sends the details to a Javabean that send out the email. This way there would be no code in the JSP page dealing with sending emails and your Javabean could be used in another page promoting ‘Reuse’.

 

HTML and graphics displayed on the web browser are classed as the presentation layer. The Java code (JSP) on the server is classed as the implementation.

 

 

Definitions :

Java Server Pages (JSP): JSP is the cross-platform method of generating dynamic content for the web.

Java Beans: A Software component that has been designed to be reusable in a variety of different environments. There is no restriction on the capability of a Bean. A Bean can perform a simple as well as a complex function and it may be visible to an end user.”

Servlets: Servlets are small programs that execute on the server side of a Web connection. Just as applets dynamically extend the functionality of a Web Browser, servlets dynamically extend the functionality of a Web Server.

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC): It is an API that can be used to access a database and dynamically construct and HTTP response from the information that is retrieved.

System Diagram :

 

 

Microsoft Access is used as our database.

For developing and testing purposes, Tomcat and our JSP files have been stored in a Windows machine – Gateway PIII 550 MHz provided by the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Once the product is fully developed, it will become property of the client (MECSP), and transferred into one of the school’s servers and also be under their supervision and maintenance.

               
 
 
System description :

 

     Required Software Tools:

                Tomcat server 3.2

                JDK 1.2.2

                Jbuilder 4.0

                MS Access

 

      Downloading and Installing the Apache Tomcat Server :

Please note that this section includes links to download and jdk 1.2.2 or higher also

The Web server called Tomcat is provided by Apache (http://www.apache.org) and supports Java servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP). Other Web servers, including Apache's regular server, may be used with Tomcat as the servlet engine.

Tomcat is included on the CD because it supports the Web server and servlet functionality required to run the XML DB demos; has additional functionality to build interesting systems, such as JSP; and it is free.

Tomcat requires Java to run. If Java is not on the machine, it may be obtained from:

http://java.sun.com

The Web site is sometimes difficult to navigate. Sun's Java Developer Kit Java 2 SDK (formerly called JDK), is currently available under the j2se directory and is called j2sdk. The Windows version 1.3.0 is at:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/install-windows.html

Step One

If you are interested, check the distribution site at www.apache.org to see if a newer version of Tomcat is available. The direct link is:

http://jakarta.apache.org/downloads/binindex.html

(Jakarta is the name of the Apache project that develops the Tomcat Web server.)

Before installing a newer version than 3.2.x, be sure it is compatible with the versions of other Apache products used, such as Xerces, Xalan, and taglibs. For example, taglibs (Sept 2001) currently requires an older version of Xalan (version 1) which requires an older version of Xerces (version 1).

Step Two

Unzip the file into a new directory for Tomcat, such as C:\jakarta-tomcat for Windows (you may be use a path like C:\Program Files\Apache Group\tomcat, but the Tomcat startup script may complain of the spaces.) For Unix, use a path such as /usr/local/tomcat.

More complete instructions may be found in the Tomcat installation directory under doc\uguide\tomcat_ug.html

Step Three

Set the environment variable for TOMCAT_HOME to refer to the Tomcat directory.

o                    For Windows NT, right-click on "My Computer", select properties, choose the "environment" properties to add an environment variable.

o                    For Unix bash/sh: TOMCAT_HOME=/usr/local/tomcat; export TOMCAT_HOME

o                    For csh/tcsh: setenv TOMCAT_HOME /usr/local/tomcat (or whatever the Tomcat directory is)

Step Four

In the same way, set the environment variable JAVA_HOME to point to the top of the Java JDK hierarchy.

Step Five

If the Java interpreter is not in the PATH environment variable, add it. The directory with the Java interpreter is probably in the "bin" subdirectory of JAVA_HOME. You may check to see if the Java interpreter directory is already in the path by typing "java" at a command prompt.

Step Six

Tomcat is ready to run. It may be started by executing the startup.bat (Windows) or startup.sh (Unix) command in $TOMCAT_HOME/bin. Tomcat leaves up a console window that may have error messages on it which are useful in debugging. To shutdown Tomcat, the command shutdown.bat or shutdown.sh are used from the same directory.

Step Seven

To test the Tomcat installation, open your Web browser to the URL:

http://localhost:8080

The Tomcat http port may be changed by modifying Tomcat's "server.xml" config file, if required.

 

 

 

      Downloading and Installing Jbuilder 4.0 :

                Jbuilder 4.0 is available at http://www.borland.com/jbuilder/

Please follow the installation instructions. Newer versions/builds of Jbuilder maybe used, and the installation for this might be significantly different. Please refer to the above website

 

     Organizing the files :

             The source files for the project are stored in the following structure:

                

                  The javabeans (classes) .java files are stored in the directory %TOMCAT_HOME%\com\secme\beans

 

                  The service components (classes) .java files are stored in the directory %TOMCAT_HOME%\com\secme\service

 

                  The .jsp pages are stored as required by the web administrator inside the % TOMCAT% directory.

 

 

      Setting up the MS Access Database :

               

                The Access database should be setup as explained in the table description in the Detailed Design document

 

 

 

 

Template created by G. Walton (GWalton@mail.ucf.edu) on August 15, 2000

This page last modified by Carthik A Sharma (appcash@yahoo.com ) on September 25, 2002