Road Blocks:

The Java team for this project experienced a number of road blocks while development proceeded with the Java project. Some of them we over came and some did not. Many of the ones mentioned here are the road blocks the team was not able to over come during the period of development, since many of the road blocks that were over come were mentioned earlier in this paper.

Mid way through the development of the project the team had the project coordinator relieved of his duties. The lost of the team member had not created drastic complications, but the team was required to regroup and reorganize.

Due to the magnitude of the application and applet, the team wanted to produce multiple test case scenarios. Unfortunately due to time constraints this objective was never completely reached. Each object was tested individually with a multitude of parameters. However, due to the time factor not every single integrated interface could be tested, due to the vastness of the project. Due to lack of resources many testing scenarios were not possible to test, or at least able to be tested thoroughly. Such resources include the running of a httpd demon on the Solaris network cluster at Villanova University, and having a working copy of Netscape 2.0 or higher for a Solaris system. A working copy of Netscape did exist on the Sun OS cluster, however Java was not installed on this system.

Towards the end of the project, the team ran into one of the major road blocks for the project. Many of the team members set up working environments at their homes or place of employment. However, the main system for centralized communication, integration, and debugging was designated to be on Villanova University's Computer Science Sun Cluster network. Several main factors put delays in the completion of the project.

Sun Cluster system crash resulting temporarily set back
The university's bootp table was corrupted a number of times preventing logging into the systems required to due any type of work
The accessibility to the room containing the Sun workstations was limited
Remote access to the system containing the Java compiler and viewer was limited
The electronic mail server for the university developed problems several times during the project development period, which was the form used in order to stay in constant communication due to distance between team members
The solaris system did not have a working copy of Netscape 2.0 or better in order to test the applet thoroughly
The solaris system did not have a httpd demon

running in order to test applets or HTML files together In order to create the ability to have remote host and client action, a concept of using a file to store this information was created on the hosts end. Though this file allowed user to read from this file, the clients were not able to write to the file as an applet. This complication cause a chain reaction of other complications with the software package.

Because the file did not exist, the ability to have remote clients was disabled, which meant the client and the server have to be run off the same machine
Because the file did not exist, port numbers for connection could not be randomly picked and designated as certain conference rooms
Because the file did not exist, and not being able to pick ports the ports had to be hard coded in to the software package as well as conference names
Because the file did not exist, and the port numbers were required to be hard coded into the application only a limited number of conference rooms could be created
Because the file did not exist, the conference room managers (Hubs) and the conference center server could not be spawned off upon demand

Within Java the idea of not permitting buttons to have images on the caused an initial complication, but was resolved by creating several images to simulate the pressing of a button. A focus image for the buttons would of been nice to implement, but other constraints did not permit this to be added at this time.

Because this application was required to be an applet, normal exiting methods were not possible to implement. Because no class can kill or close an applet due to the Java class hierarchy, the applet causes security violation errors and does not completely exit the applet upon request without going to the applet window and quitting the applet itself. Keeping in mind this only occurs when using an appletview to run the applet.

Due to many of these road blocks, many design issues and features were unable to be implemented to the make this project that more complete. The road blocks were not caused by one reason or factor, but rather multiple. In addition to these problems each of the team member in one form or another had some personal difficulties in their life during the life time of the project. In my case I had a Corneal Transplant done.

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Written By Graham L. Mehl
Last Modified on April 23, 1996
© Villanova University
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