Last night was the OIT Senior Project Software Exposition. It was Great!

I was really impressed by what we put together for this year's show. I went to last year's and heard from others that had been in previous years'... This was a much bigger and better presentation.

First, we rearranged the room to better accomodate all of the presenters and attendees. A classroom layout doesn't really fit for doing several software presentations.

Second, every student made up a poster for his or her project. All of these posters looked good and added an extra bit of professional feel to the whole show. We also used the poster images for a rolling slide show on the room's projection system.

Third, every project was very demonstrable. The two game developers even had multiple computers involved to really show off what they were doing.

Fourth, we had refreshments available. Much more pleasurable for those attending.

Finally, the invites went out to people beyond the school. The event was very well attended and I'm sure will set a standard for future senior software fairs at OIT.

And well it should!

The days are counting down quickly... in just thirteen days we will be conducting the Software Exposition for the 2004 Senior Projects at OIT. There are nine projects coming to a close and all will be displayed for others to see.

If you have a chance, it would be worth stopping by to see the applications that have been built. Who knows? You might just find your Next Great Developer while you are there!

There will be free food, fun, and great bunch of people. Below are the details of where and when:

5:00pm - 6:30pm
Tuesday, June 8th

Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Rd.
(185th and Walker Road)
Beaverton, OR 97006
(503) 725-2129

Thursday was the monthly meeting of the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG). The speaker this month was Andrew Brust (his company site) talking about ADO.NET and XML.

Seeing as this is a subject relevant to my Señor project and I haven't fully explored the possibilities, I came right home and tried out some of the pieces that he demonstrated. Other than a small issue with Norton Internet Security telling me that I was being attacked from IP address 127.0.0.1, it all went off with out a serious hitch.

I am beginning to realize how much I would like to be using a Tablet PC at events such as this, though. There are only two months until Christmas - I wonder if Santa might win the $190 Million (Powerball) tonight?

We took a look at both enhanced requirements and Use Cases last evening.

Requirements need to be correct, specific, verifiable, and traceable. Some examples of BAD requirements would be:

1. A useable system
2. Lots of features
3. The fastest performance

• I'm not traceable

Requirements and Use Cases are not the same thing. A requirement is that correct, specific, verifiable, and traceable item in the list. A Use Case is more like a story of use. For example:

Use Case 1

The user chooses to add a new movie to a list. The system prompts the user for a movie title. After the user provides the movie title, the system searches its own db for the movie. If it is not in the local db, it requests the movies information from the "web service". Once the movie is found, the system prompts the user to verify the movie selection. The user then verifies and accepts the movie. Finally, the system adds the movie to the list.

Alternate Courses

1. The movie is not found locally or through the web service.
2. The web service is not available.
3. The user does not accept the found movie as the correct one.

By no means is this a complete Use Case for the design that we are intending to do, but it provides some sense of how it should flow.

I was very pleased to see that the <<includes>> and <<extends>> concepts made it into the discussion. These can be invaluable in reducing the volume of information and the ability to comprehend the set of Use Cases in the system.

Here will lie my notebook for my Señor Project.

The project (currently) is a movie information source. I enjoy using the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), but find there are features that I would like to add to it. Also, it just doesn't work all that well in a disconnected manner.

In an effort to resolve these shortcomings, I will build a system that includes:

• A web service that will acquire information from sites like IMDb, Amazon, YMDb, or others about movies and make that information available to clients.
• A client that can connect to the web service and download that information into a local repository and provide features that I have not been able to find available through other means.
• Possibly, allow the posting back of information to IMDb so that ones list of movies is available without the client.

There are many details to iron out over the next three months, but most seem quite achievable.