CPSC 220 Fall 2007
HW 14: Project Preparation

The homework assignment that we discussed in class and that I described in my e-mail is outlined below. Let me know if you have any questions.

Goal

Our goal is to produce a working, useful program for Matt Miller that allows the user to:

Search for a company by name from the 1992, 1999, or 2006 database
List the top N employers in 1992, 1999, or 2006
Give the names and number of companies with a given SIC and/or in a given locality that
- Opened
- Closed
- Added employees
- Lost employees
between any two of 1992, 1999, and 2006.

We will invite Matt back during the last week of class -- probably Wed, Dec 5 -- view the final product and give us feedback.

Plan

First we need to fix up some preliminary elements:

GUI -- the command line interface we've been using won't cut it, so we need to produce a GUI that will guide the user through choosing their task (from the list above) and enter the various information (name, year, etc) required. We'll need to use a standalone Java application, as an applet won't give us access to the data files we need.
Data -- The three data files (1992, 1996, 2006) are in different formats, and 2006 contains data for the whole state, not just the region. So we need to convert these files to a uniform format and write a routine that reads and creates Employer objects from this format.

Kristin, Tim, and Jared will take on the GUI task. Steven, Myles and Kyle will take on the data task. For Wednesday each group must meet to plan their task, bringing a clear description of their plan to the class for discussion. Plans should include the following elements:

GUI
- Layout -- how will it look on the page?
- Functionality -- what happens when a user clicks this or chooses that?
- Implementation design -- what Java classes will be used to implement each part? How will they work together?
Data
- What format is each data file in?
- What should the standard format look like, and how will the translation be done for each file? E.g., dropping a field from a line is easier than rearranging the order of the fields or changing the format of a given field.
- How will the read method be structured -- part of what class, what parameters, how will it store the info, etc?

After presenting their design and getting feedback from the class on Wed, each group will have until Monday to implement their piece. Next week we'll work on putting in the meat of the program. As we discussed, time is short. A rough schedule is shown below. Items in square brackets are topics we will discuss in class and through homework that may not be directly related to the project.

Week of Monday Wednesday Friday
Nov 5 Assign preliminary tasks (GUI, data) Designs for preliminary tasks due; present to class [Hashing]
Nov 12 -Code for preliminary tasks due; present to class
-Assign efficient searching tasks (AVL trees, R-B trees, possibly other) [Graphs] [Graphs]
Nov 19 -Efficient search code due; present to class
-Make final interface and functionality decisions and assign tasks to carry out Thanksgiving Thanksgiving
Nov 26 [Graph algorithms] [Graph algorithms] Test 3
Dec 3 Dry run of demonstration Present final project to Matt Miller Wrap up

Week of	Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Nov 5	Assign preliminary tasks (GUI, data)	Designs for preliminary tasks due; present to class	[Hashing]
Nov 12	-Code for preliminary tasks due; present to class -Assign efficient searching tasks (AVL trees, R-B trees, possibly other)	[Graphs]	[Graphs]
Nov 19	-Efficient search code due; present to class -Make final interface and functionality decisions and assign tasks to carry out	Thanksgiving	Thanksgiving
Nov 26	[Graph algorithms]	[Graph algorithms]	Test 3
Dec 3	Dry run of demonstration	Present final project to Matt Miller	Wrap up

CPSC 220 Fall 2007HW 14: Project Preparation

Goal

Plan

CPSC 220 Fall 2007
HW 14: Project Preparation