Project Results

Long over due yes..

A+ overall.

YAY

So ive finished everything now :D
My presentation went really well, lots of people turned up!!!
So yeah... holidays now.
Thanks for reading!!!

FINSHED!!!

So im finished now besides my presentation :D

Though presentation isnt something to be looked forward to. Oh well, it has been a good journey, long and prosperous. Hopefully i shall get a good result, this will be posted as soon as i know! ^^

10/10 Finished Report!

So even though the report took much longer than planned i got there in the end. Today i am going to the LLC to ask some questions about basic layout etc, so that should be good. I have also sent my report to my supervisor and my sister to have a look at it. I'm thinking of paying someone professional to have a look at the spelling and grammar, but thats yet to be decided as it costs around $100.

End parts taken out of report:

Conclusion

Problems

Self Evaluation

Where to from Here

10/10 Where to from Here

1 Where to From Here

1.1 Application Improvements

1.1.1 Interface

Because the system is only a proof on concept and there were time constraints, there are many improvements that could be made to the application. Grid views were used with one basic data source, this results in a basic data set such as a job record showing only the user id instead of the user name. A better way of doing this would have been to manually loop through and display all of the records with the data needed into a table.

The design and look of the interface was done in a hurry and could have been improved, however this was not part of the core functionality so very little time was spent on this. If more time was given this could have been re-visited and improved, or more time could be spent on other ideas.

1.1.2 Mapping

The mapping works by marking jobs in this design, if the user just wanted to map out only client locations instead of jobs, they cannot do this. Another page could be added just for mapping out clients.

Routing in the proof of concept only shows the street name and the directions (shown in Figure 7.1.1). This is because only the basic function of getting a route is used. It is possible customize the format of the data by looping through the returned route and displaying it. This would allow the job information to be shown under each stop as well as displaying the actual street number.

1.1.3 Searching

The searching of records was one of the original features of the system. By the end of implementation there wasn’t enough time to implement the searching, and a line needed to be drawn for the end of the implementation milestone. Searching was low on the list of important features for functionality. If more time was spent on this application the searching features would be added as it is something that increases the ease of use immensely.

1.2 Mapping Improvements

1.2.1 Sorting of Clients and Jobs

The algorithm programmed for sorting the clients (the whole process is explained in section 6.2) is not the most efficient or reliable way of completing the sorting of clients. This is mainly because of the lack of experience on the author’s behalf as well as time constraints not allowing the re-assessment of how the process works. If this were to be improved there would be performance benefits as well as the mapping being more reliable.

Because the mapping is done by using straight line distances it is not very accurate, however the other option was to use Google maps which wasn’t very good for performance and resources. If there was a way of calculating the driving distance quicker and more efficient than using Google, the routing would be more precise.

1.2.2 Mapping Services

At the moment the main functions online mapping services provide are basic mapping. Some of the mapping services provide different features such as 3D views of cities, round routes, small amounts of traffic reports etc. But none provide high detailed traffic reports for around the world. Ideally, for the best route, details about traffic jams, crashes, road works etc would be needed. Because the application implemented only provides mapping of jobs, not on route GPS directions, the traffic details would only be given when the route is made. In future the routes may be used with a GPS at run time so the information would need to be constantly updated.

There is much more potential with mapping services for the future such as routes could be shown in 3D in 360 degree views or the traffic information could be changed and shown minutes after a crash happens.

10/10 Conclusion

Mapping services offer many advantages for all types of mapping in an application. Using Google Maps with the job tracking system allowed the author to easily integrate mapping into the system only by using a few lines of code, without doing this the project scope would have been to large, and a much harder task. The Application Programming Interface provided by Google for mapping was straight forward and provided all of the features needed. Because the JavaScript needed for the mapping is very small it is easy to integrate Microsoft Live Search Maps or Yahoo! Maps by changing the application key and actual map code.

Because the Google Maps API has been around for a few years now there are vast amounts of documentation. This made the research, eventual implementation and problem solving much easier as most problems have been faced by another developer and posted in the forums.

Google Maps provides all of the features needed for this proof of concept application, however there is much potential for the future with better routing and run time traffic conditions, 3D mapping, faster loading times and more detailed satellite imagery.

Because the proof of concept application was implemented using the back end as a web service, there is a lot of room for future expansion on alternative devices using different platforms and languages.

With more development time the job tracking application could be vastly improved by adding a more efficient algorithm for sorting locations, giving the user more detailed routing information, adding traffic details to a route, designing a more appealing interface, showing more detailed information in the grid views and adding search features for better usability.

There are many improvements that could be made, however the main functionality is provided to make this application a proof of concept. The original goal was to provide:

“A system based on job tracking that incorporates mapping to enhance the usability and ease of finding client/job locations. Not only will the user be able to map out one client/job location, they will also be able to combine a list of jobs for the day and get back a map with the most efficient route to take which will cut down travel time.”

This goal was achieved, and the project a success. As well as the success of the implementation, the personal goals were achieved by the author. Programming skills were increased, experience was gained, management skills were improved, time management skills were improved and a new programming language was learnt.

10/10 Problems

1 Reflections on Learning (no figures shown)

All significant problems or issues will be discussed in this section. Problems and reflections are categorised by technical, personal and project management.

1.1 Technical

1.1.1 C Sharp & Programming

Because the authors programming skills were at a very low level when the project was started the C Sharp learning curve was quite high. The first step was taking what was known about a familiar language (specifically Visual Basic.NET) and learning how to do the same in C Sharp.

After the basics were known and the application started, a few problems came up with using lists, static variables and global classes. The normal lists were implemented but it was discovered that each user would be using a different set of data. The author talked to a more experienced C Sharp programmer and got answers to all of the confusing aspects of C Sharp and the problems faced. After understanding how to implement the features needed properly implementation carried on.

1.1.2 Web Service

Once the back end service structure was implemented and fake data inserted into the database it was time to create the web service methods. The adding, deleting and editing methods were easy to implemented and worked straight away. However once the author needed to pass a set of data to the interface a wall was hit. It was realised that the author was using the wrong container for storing data temporarily. A dictionary was being used, when a generic list should have been used. Once the dictionaries were changed to lists the .toArray method could be used to pass the list to the interface. The code for sending and retrieving and looping through the array is shown in section 6.1.1.

After the data was getting to the interface the author had to find a way to read the data out into the classes. After researching and getting nowhere an example of how to do this was provided by a technical supervisor of how they read the data out of the array. This was as simple as just grabbing the data from the array and creating a new instance of the wanted class and passing in each record.

1.1.3 Virtual Machine

Originally the virtual machine being used was given 10 Gigabytes space. This quickly filled up to a point where the author was trying to delete unnecessary data; however this couldn’t be done forever. Eventually when no files would save due to lack of space this issue needed to be dealt with properly. This majorly halted development as nothing could be saved and the author wanted to avoid loosing data. After researching the many ways to extend a virtual machines space it was decided to use an application provided by VMware that converts virtual machines and increases their size. So the virtual machine was copied to a new location with 5 more Gigabytes of hard drive space.

1.1.4 Logging In

At one stage logging in did not work any more. Originally the login authentication was based on active directory, but later on it was decided to use the from the internet option. This is safer to choose at this time because it is easy to create and manage users and roles without the complexity of using active directory. After changing the authentication type logging in still did not work. A long error was given, so one part was researched: "[HttpException]: Failed to start monitoring changes to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot because access is denied". After researching similar problems using the internet and trying many fixes, one for this error worked. This was by changing the IIS ASPNET settings to framework 2.0, a very simple error but an easy setting to forget.

1.1.5 JavaScript

The first mapping done was in the client address forms, which the Subgurim control was used for. Using the control made mapping very easy because the JavaScript was created dynamically behind the scenes. Once the author realised that the Subgurim control did not do the type of routing needed, an alternative way of mapping needed to be used. After asking around, and researching the internet on what other people have done with JavaScript and ASP.NET as well as Google Maps and ASP.NET, the Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript method was used (more on this in section 6.2.6).

Once the method of using JavaScript was selected, the difficulty of making it run came up. At first this method was tried using a button which would trigger the JavaScript, however it still needed to be run straight after all of the other logic so that a list of latitude longitude points could be passed to Google. It was soon realised that the easiest way to run the JavaScript where it was needed was to insert the code for the registerstartupscript exactly where it needed to be inserted. So this was placed after the latitude longitude string is completed allowing the correct data to be passed to Google.

1.1.6 Job Paging

If there are enough jobs to be multiple pages it becomes a problem for checking items on multiple pages, as the state of the previous page is not kept (grid view shown in figure 8.1.1) (not shown here). Due to time constraints the easiest option was to extend the amount of records before paging started. In future however, this would be changed to keep the records selected checked.

1.1.7 Database Constraint

Deleting a client address is more complex than deleting a client or user because of the relationship between that database tables. Because the job table has a relationship with the client ID as well as the client address ID, the address ID can’t cascade delete a job when it is deleted because of an error:

“Introducing FOREIGN KEY constraint 'FK_job_clientAddress' on table 'job' may cause cycles or multiple cascade paths.”

Figure 8.1.

Due to time constraints this was not resolved, but would be fixed if the system were to move on from a proof of concept. The tables concerned are shown in Figure 8.1.2. (not shown here)

1.2 Project management

1.2.1 Travelling Salesman

The travelling salesman problem occurs when the most optimised and efficient route is needed between a very large number of locations. The algorithm needed for this calculation would become slower the larger the locations. There are a few algorithms to deal with this problem, however with current technology it is just not possible to quickly calculate on a large scale.

The author had to face the problem of how the routing was going to be done, and how efficient it was going to be. A small amount of time went into looking at this problem, however for this proof of concept a basic brute force algorithm was chosen for simplicity. This was by looping through each location and finding the nearest position until there are no locations left.

1.2.2 Task Management

Due to lack of experience in many of the fields of this project it was very hard to estimate exactly how long any particular task was going to take. It was decided to assign time limits based on how important a task was, for example the implementation stage was given the highest amount of time because of the author’s lack of confidence in programming. At some points the time given was not enough, but not far out enough to cause a panic. If a task couldn’t be completed by the milestone date a detailed summary of what still needed to be completed was put together and tackled straight away during the next milestone.

1.3 Personal

The only personal problem that majorly impacted this project was time management. This is the authors first long term project so it took some time to get used to consecutively putting time into one thing. The amount of hours needed to spend on the project per week was 30-40, which is a lot compared to the assignments previously completed. This problem was never fully resolved, however by spending time putting together time tables, task lists and recording hours spent per week or on a daily basis this skill was vastly improved.

10/10 Self Evaluation

When I put together the project proposal I had no idea what I was in for, but I did want a challenge, particularly on the programming side of things. Once the proposal was handed in and accepted the research and design begun. After designing the system and starting on some implementation, particularly programming object oriented in C Shap.NET, I realised how much of a challenge the programming was going to be. After getting some syntax help from a friend however my pace of progress picked up.

After I gained confidence in programming the project went smoothly until it was time to create the mapping algorithm. This held me up for a while, but once I found an algorithm for calculating distances and a simple bubble sort all that was left was the sorting of client locations. This in itself took a long time, as well as a lot of trouble shooting and testing.

These two main challenges have left me with much more confidence in my problem solving skills and programming skill, which is what I had hoped for.

I have never before done anything with online mapping, or using an API to integrate maps. I found this area fascinating, especially the potential of what can be done in the future with traffic information. Using a mapping service and implementing an interface with a web service backend really gave me an idea of how you can re-use code and functionality across platforms and benefit from it.

The project as a whole took much longer than planned. I believe that this is because I underestimated how long the majority of tasks would take, and how hard certain tasks would be. This was particularly true with the mapping part which ended up being much more complex than originally thought. The extra time spent ensuring that this process was as good as I could make it was worth it, and in the end works just how I want it to. I learnt that even if you make a project scope right at the beginning and make time frames for tasks a project can take much longer than planned

There are many more improvements that I would make to the system if I had a larger amount of time, but I am perfectly happy just how it is now as a proof of concept as it does what got done what I set out to do.

28/9 Fixed Problem

Heres a screenshot of the new marking jobs for mapping.

So now theres a check box. This also makes it easier for when the user wants to make another map, they only need to check another job. After trouble shooting this and dealing with two simple problems, it now works well. The loading time takes longer than it did before, but its reliable and adds the jobs.

Tomorow i have a project meeting. The first parts of the report should be done including the implementation, testing and most of problems part.

Should be completely done by end of holidays :D

25/9 Report Writing

Wow, last post was on the eighth. Ive been busy with SYD300 and stupid maths, thats my excuse. I'm 7.5 k words into my report now, and hoping to finish off the implementation part of the report and fix up the starting bits by tomorrow so i can send to my supervisor.

Was supposed to be finished implementation a while ago now, but after a meeting with supervisor showing the mapping, it was decided that more attention needed to be paid to the reliability of adding jobs to the list to map. So by next monday i would have replaced the selectedindex_changed to just looping through all records and by using a checkbox. This way all clients are added in one go. So i didnt figure out what the problem was, but going around it is quicker.

8/9 Report

By today i wanted to have been doing the implemenation part of the report. But what ive noticed, is that because i didnt research properly the first time, it is taking alot longer than i thought. As well as this, i realised that the research, or the writing up of the mapping services is the most important information part of my report, because it tells people about web services, mapping services, a comparison of three, why i choose google, and a more detailed explanation of the API provided by google.

So im hoping that because of the research taking so long, the rest will be quicker, mainly because i will be writing about what i did, not research. Also, just thought id mention that i have a systems development assignment due in two weeks and i havent even looked at the assignment sheet, and if we looked at it in class i cant remember. My first statistics test is in two weeks as well... so im going to be busy.

I did decide not to go to wellington though... so that gives me 4 more days to work on the report for when i want it to be finished. At this stage it looks like im behind, but that wont be easy to gauge until ive started on the design part of the report properly and can move quickly vs slow research.

Tomorow i am gonna carry on with the research part and a little of the design part of report, just so it looks like im moving forward more, have systems development in the afternoon as well.

7/9 Implementation Summary

Today i made the diagram to more easily represent how the mapping works. I decided due to time constraints that i wasnt going to add in the search functions, as well as not spend more time on the interface. Because i used standard grid views for the jobs on the selectJobs page, i only had the basic items showing like the client ID, instead of the client name, or the client address ID, instead of the street address. This however, like the searching, isnt an important part of this proof of concept, but only interface imporovement.

From now on, i will only be working on my report, tomorow i will post up what i want to complete in the next week.

1/9 Still Research

This week im still working on finishing the implementation, i am a little bit behind on the research part of the report as its harder than i anticipated, so tonight i will be working on that and today on that instead of maths.

September
1 Mon
Maths 9-12. Luchtime work on maths. Maths 4-6.
2 Tue
Morning - Start on implementation - design part of report. SYD300 in afternoon.
3 Wed
Carry on with design part of report. Do little bit of implementation. Send what ive doneof report to supervisor. Work on SYD300 assignment.
4 Thu
Finish design part of report, move onto implementation part of report.
5 Fri
SYD300 in morning. Carry on with report, and meet supervisor in afternoon. Do some maths homework.
6 Sat
Maybe take the day off... :D
7 Sun
Maths and finish off bits and pieces of what ive done on report so far.

28/8 Report Work, Finish Intro & Background

Dont really have much to say today. The report is a slower process than i had anticipated, mainly due to the more professional wording and not typing alot of BS. Which isnt my favourite way of explaining stuff. Ive done the terms of reference, acknowledgements, basic contents page outline, exec summary and introduction, to a certain extent, needs a bit more fixing. I still need to do the background, and i'm thinking i may actually leave these bits til the end of my report.

I started on the research part of the report... but didnt get as much done as i hoped, so will be chipping that over the next few days.

27/8 Unbound Checkboxes and Logic + Report started

For the morning i am gonna add the logic into the unbound checkbox's that i added last night. Below is the code that i need to access the control inside the gridview. It works good, and is ALOT easier than the idea i read first.

foreach (GridViewRow gvrow in gvJobs.Rows)
{
System.Web.UI.WebControls.CheckBox cbUrgent = (System.Web.UI.WebControls.CheckBox)gvrow.FindControl("cbUrgent");
if (cbUrgent.Checked)
{
LOGIC HERE
}
}




Now i'm gonna add the code to validate that only a couple of boxes have been checked, and the logic to hold the clients selected and add them to the top of the route list. Well after i make coffee..

So todays overall plan is:
27 - Wed
Just work on report, write terms of reference, acknowledgements, basic contents page outline, exec summary, introduction, background.

Instead of starting SYD300 assignment two, i'm gonna start on my maths assignment, mainly because the syd assignment has been pushed out to the 19th instead of the 12th, and maths... is well hard and boring lol. So better get it out of way. I also will hopefully finish this coding swiftly.

Whilst writing the executive summary draft i thought to myself, it would be interesting to see what other people think of mapping services in general and in context to eachother. I found these interesting articles:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/17/comparing-the-mapping-services/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Web_Map_Services

Sigh... so today i didnt finish the coding or all of the report or start on maths, but hey i'm getting somewhere, hopefully i'll catch up on report and start on next part tomorow as well as finish the coding i was sposed to do yesterday.

Hours: 5

26/8 Unbound Checkbox for Urgency

_________________________________________________________

Today i didnt quite get the urgent checkbox thing going... Was alot more complicated than i thought because gridviews like to have bound fields. So i went on a huge goose chase to find out how to make a column with unbound fields that you can check. I found one article that made it look really hard... so then i decided id do it the unefficient way and add a checkboxlist and dynamically add jobs to that, then the user can select urgent from there. Then i found out that this was just as hard!!! So i was thinking there must be an easier way!!!! So after googling a bit more i found this link:

http://www.netnewsgroups.net/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet/topic25315.aspx

• I didnt realise that you could edit templates that you add as a column. So i learnt something interesting today. Now i have a checkbox column, and have to add the logic which is:
• Testing that the user has only checked 2 jobs
  When the user clicks on the MAP button i need to add in the logic for taking those client jobs out of the sorting, sort just those two, then put them at the front of the string i pass to google maps.
  

I want to do this now, but its getting late and my brain is fighting getting any homework done. So i'll have to put in more hours tommorow to keep up with the schedule i made today.

Hours: 6.5

26/8 New Timeline

I have created a new timeline, so i'll just put up what i want to achieve this week.

_________________________________________________________
26 - Tue
Set Timeline, post layout I want report to be in, add urgency code into mapping page. Have SYD300 today also, so project work will be done in spare morning hours.Get SYD300 assignment2.
27 - Wed
Just work on report, write terms of reference, acknowledgements, basic contents page outline, exec summary, introduction, background. Start SYD300 assignment 2
28 - Thu
Write most of research part of report. This shouldn’t be too big. Start maths assignment. Raiding at night.
29 - Fri
SYD300 in morning. Work on maths during afternoon.
30 - Sat
Carry on with maths / finish maths.
31 - Sun
Bits and pieces on project implementation. Raiding at night.
_________________________________________________________

So this morning i have put together a timeline for between now and the start of October. I am also going to put together a basic outline of what my contents should look like in my report, and finish off some basic coding for making certain jobs urgent. OHH also, something i havent done is a proper conclusion of the implementation part two finished. So shall do that when i get time.

_________________________________________________________
Report Layout version 1.0

1 Executive Summary

2 Introduction

3 Background

4 Research

- Mapping services out there
- Google
- Yahoo
- Microsoft

- Google Maps – a further look

- C Sharp – a new language


5 Design

- Identifying Use Cases

- Designing the user interface

- Designing the Database
- Database Diagram
- Data Dictionary

- Designing the class diagrams / backend
- Client – tracking interface
- Service – tracking service

6 Implementation

- Database and stored procedures

- Back end web service

- Interface Backend

- Interface
- Masterpage
- Forms

- Mapping

- Testing

8 Future Development and improvements

9 Personal Evaluation

10 Conclusion

11 Bibliography

22/8 UML & Screenshots

Heres my UML diagram and a screen shot of the mapping page. Still have a smal amount of things to do, which i will list later.. have to go stack wood haha.

What i still have to do:

• Little more user validation
• Code header commenting
• Add in urgent tick to job list for mapping and logic
• Double check UML diagram
  
  
  
  

21/8 Last Official Day of Implementation

Well! Here we are... I'm gonna spend the day fixing things up, commenting code, make a new UML diagram, upload screen shots, more validation, and explain to some extent how i got it working.

At the moment i am having a ha-ha funny problem. Ive made it so the user can have a straight line of points and end at the last point, or they can finish where they started, slightly different logic. What i'm getting on both of these is a random address at the end... on bridge street. I deleted all the records to make sure there wasnt a wrong geocode pointing to bridge street... but yeah still finishes on bridge street. Spooky, shall try figure out wtf it is.

After i fix this problem think the next best thing to do is finish some of the validation.

Ended up fixing the problem, but it was through fixing another problem... so never figured out what the 4 bridge street was. Although we later found out that 4 bridge street is just going on rent i think. So i had a problem with have a 1 instead on a 0 in one of the loops for looping through and sorting the records, so what it was doing was leaving on out. Anyways i didnt fully finished the UML diagram, and its getting late. Didnt quite achiece what i wanted today, but tomorow is another day before my meeting.

18/8 YUSSS javascript works!

_________________________________________________________
YUSSS, finally got the javascript going.
_________________________________________________________

Basically what i needed to do was add the key reference in web.config (which i had).

Add code in the page_init part of the aspx.cs file for loading the key into the head part of the page, so that google knows its valid.

Add a button

Add the code behind the button either in page_init or page_load.

code: Click Here!

Think i tried to rush into understanding it too quick, so what i did today was step back and learn different parts of it, such as testing if google maps even worked in basic html on my page, which it did. Then moved on a page.clientscript.register... to see if that worked even with the most basic alert function, which it did. So i didnt see why the google stuff shouldnt work now that i knew how to use a button.

I then came accross a couple of errors from google maps which slowed me down a bit, 'gmap2' is undefined and 'object expected'. I soon figured out that this was because i had commented out the code which set up my app key, which would mean that google wouldnt allow me to have a map.

Tomorow i am going to finish off the part i was stuck at, which is passing the finished lat,lng values from my array that i create into a map.

Hours: 5.5

LINKS
http://www.thescarms.com/dotnet/clientjava2.aspx
http://aspdotnetcodebook.blogspot.com/2008/03/handling-google-maps-api-keys-with.html
http://shepherdweb.com/2006/12/08/handling-google-maps-api-keys-with-aspnet-masterpages-and-webconfig/