BIT320 Remix: project2 Archives

Would you like no ‘ or two ‘’ ?

After reading Kevin’s post about Requirement 6, I checked out that SQL script he suggest.

It seems to be exactly what we’re looking for. However, when I tried to implement the script via the X-team, I ran into some syntax problems. In order to select a specific table, the script required that the table name be between apostrophes. However, the bind variable ? does not work when placed between apostrophes, ‘?’. Does anyone know how to get around this syntax error?

In Matt's Musings, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Server Side Up

In a recent post by Shady she comments,

“We would input information for a retailer through the web and it wouldn’t show up, out of the 5 - 10 times we tried to input, 2 or 3 would actually go through and show up on the website. It wouldn’t work, and then it would work, and then it wouldn’t work.”

Supermatt adds to Shady’s comments with,

“We have had similar issues were our code partly works, but never inconsistency when we update data. Although we have not inserted much today.”

Without knowing exactly what you were inserting I can’t say for sure, but I would bet that you were running into problems with non-escaped characters. With many databases, characters such as apostrophes and quotes can cause an insert statement to fault. This occurs because of the coding language uses these characters to delimit statements and so when it encounters when of these characters in your statement, it thinks it has reached the end of the statement and the insert fails. So when inserting things such as apostrophes, ampersands, quotes and such use HTML ASCII codes such as ” or &. Or escape the characters with a \ as in \&.

In Matt's Musings, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Server Problem??

Following up on Shadywater’s question:

We couldn’t decide if it was our code’s problem or as we recently discovered at bud’s office, could be a server issue. What does everyone else think? Does anyone else run into the same problems?

We have not found this problem to be true. We have had similar issues were our code partly works, but never inconsistency when we update data. Although we have not inserted much today. Yesterday we added lots of data without problems. If it is a server problem please let us know.

In SuperMatt, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Servering Inconsistancies

So, as we were wrapping up our project 2 and just trying to our last minute testing to make sure everything works and we ran into some inconsistancies.

We would input information for a retailer through the web and it wouldn’t show up, out of the 5 - 10 times we tried to input, 2 or 3 would actually go through and show up on the website. It wouldn’t work, and then it would work, and then it wouldn’t work. We couldn’t decide if it was our code’s problem or as we recently discovered at bud’s office, could be a server issue. What does everyone else think? Does anyone else run into the same problems?

In Shady Waters, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Responding to Aga

Aga, saw your two posts. I was unaware of the jEdit problem. You can log into two separate hosts under different user names, i.e., thecommunityengine.com and elab-linux4.bus.umich.edu. I guess, per your report, not the same host though.

As for your other issue, I fixed it. We should talk. The general strategy is what I outlined here, but a few of the details were missing in your effort. You were right. You almost had it.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/18/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Almost there: Please help

We’re getting the query form to work and we’re almost there. I got it to work (it’s simple, but the big complicated baby is being born tomorrow). I got everything to work except for the data to show up as a table. I’ve been trying to figure out what’s not working with connecting the simpleTable.xsl to the final output file and the only thing I could come up with was the templatematch command which refers to the rowset-element. I think everything is right so I’m out of ideas. Something’s missing and I’m determined to make this work. Please help. The files that interlink are on Kevin’s account under webapps/XSQL5/XSQL5TEST called createStoreInsertFormAGA1.xsql, customerHTMLAGA.xsl, insertStoreHTMLAGA.xsl, insertStoreAGA.xsql. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

In Pink Footsie, 12/18/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

RSS Project Question, SuperMatt Goes for Bonus

Matt references an RSS question Aga raised last week. Frankly, I confused this one with a bookmark someone had made about RSS resources they had found for the project. The bookmark sounded like people were charging ahead. Matt and Aga want some ideas for how RSS could be used for Denali. Here’s a couple of ideas:

A feed of the most recent flavor requests from customers. Maybe the zip code could be a category element (i.e., a tag). You could easily aggregate requests by zip. Flavor might be another category element.
You could also have a feed of salesperson updates.

Basically, the ideas is to use RSS as a notification format. Categories give you convenient ways to aggregate the information in the feed.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

RSS Question still not answered

A week ago Aga wondered:

We’re wondering what kind of functionality would you like us to have involving RSS? We have a couple of ideas on how we could feed, but we’re wondering what are some options or preferential ways to feed into (let’s say we have a website…what do we feed it to? is there anything else we should consider?). Though we haven’t gotten to it, we’d like to attempt this portion though we may not get it to work. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

We still haven’t resolved this issue and now I am trying to decide which data I should try to transform into valid RSS feeds. Any ideas or thoughts are welcomed. Thank you

In SuperMatt, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Answering Supriya’s question from 30,000 feet

After clearly having done much leg work, Supriya asks a rather detailed but conceptual question about how to employ user input to refine a query. My best answer, given the conceptual nature of the question, is to study XSQL4. In XSQL4, we took user input into an html form and submitted it to an XSQL page. In XSQL4, this page then added data to the database, but you could very easily have had the page just ask a query substituting the form data for the bind parameters.

My best advice is to start trying to figure out how to adapt XSQL4 and start asking questions from there.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

jbartko panics much too soon!

Jenny notes some continuing problems using a database sequence to generate a customer ID. Her team has struggled with this, and it is indeed hard to get to work right. You have to set up a sequence in oracle. You have to use XSQL to grab a new number from the sequence and XSLT to convert the result into an html form. Finally you have to submit the form to another XSQL page that actually inserts the customer into the database.

Well, Jenny’s group got the Oracle problem solved and thought they had everything set up for the rest of the chain. But, they were still getting an error message.

However, I tried it now, and it just worked.

“How can that be?” you might ask. Well, at each phase in the chain I just described, there is caching. Oracle cashes, XSQL and XSLT cache, and your browser caches. It can be hard to get all of these caches to clear out. Waiting a little bit can fix the issue. Changing the file slightly and resaving it can also fix the issue.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

need more help please

Follow up to Lindsay’s post:

Part 1 of our problem is solved. Create statements have been updated, sequences in there, etc.

PART 2 - we still don’t know what to do. High level problem: it is not grabbing the next number and putting it in the table. Therefore, we get a message that it cannot insert a null value for primary key (customer ID). Here’s the error message:

ORA-01400: cannot insert NULL into (”JBARTKO”.”CUSTOMER”.”CUSTOMERID”) ORA-06512: at line 2

Help?

In jb's blog, 12/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

sequence problems

Lindsay mentions some sequence problems. Specifically, she is getting these problems:

create sequence retID increment by 1 start with 100
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00955: name is already used by an existing object

From the message, the issue is clearly that something else has the name she wants to give her sequence. A two part solution:

Give the sequence another name that will be unique, for instance, retIDSeq giving: create sequence retIDSeq increment by 1 start with 100
When dropping tables, don’t forget to drop the sequence, for instance, drop sequence retIDSeq

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/16/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Project Questions

Zeenah and Pink Footsie have been having a conversation about this clause in the project requirements:

justify the choice of functionality you implement

Zeenah’s cut:

Is this just telling us to explain the level we took our project to, in the aspect of how it serves customers and Denali, and why we took it to the level that we did?

Zeenah, you hit the nail on the head. Remember, you cannot do everything. Your group did a great job nailing the problem and proposing a solution. That’s a good way to define your focus, what you will and will not do.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 12/15/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Zeenah’s question

Zeenah says:

justify the choice of functionality you implement
Is this just telling us to explain the level we took our project to, in the aspect of how it serves customers and Denali, and why we took it to the level that we did?

I think you are correct. That is what we are planning on doing. In addition to a thorough description of the business problem, we are supposed to justify why we chose to implement what we did and why we thought those things to be more important than others (why some things are just a mock up). Obviously some things we don’t know how to do, but I think this is an exercise in being able to justify why let’s say Denali should go with your version of the project than their professionals’. I think it’s just selling your idea and being able to explain why X and not Z. I hope this wasn’t too confusing and that it helps.

In Pink Footsie, 12/14/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Question about Write Up

The last section of Project 2’s write up says to

justify the choice of functionality you implement

Is this just telling us to explain the level we took our project to, in the aspect of how it serves customers and Denali, and why we took it to the level that we did?

In zee124, 12/14/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

At the End of the Show

Recently, there has been a bit of flurry on the communityengine regarding the project presentations, the level we should attain, and each groups feelings regarding it. JB, Matt and Matt, Tigerlilly, and Bud have all commented extensivly.

There has been a general concern regarding the comparison between groups because each group has different levels of ability and that directly effects the output of each group and also the grades each group gets. I think they are all valid concerns. Bud has address this concern by saying:

I’m willing to give up to the allowed 60% As in the class and, after today, see that as the likely outcome. However, for that to happen, you need to continue to sell me on why your project is good, not on why you cannot achieve as much as your peers.

But I think another interesting point to make is, why are we all so competitive? Is just a trait that business school students have, develop when we enter the bschool community, or maybe it isn’t competitiveness at all? I am as guilty as any other of competition and the desire to win. And this type of question leads directly to our reward system, grades, and what it actually encourages.

We’ve talked about this issue off and on here on the Remix. But its always an interesting questions to bring up. Because in it’s basic, education should be about learning…our desire to learn and ideal, we should be able to motivate ourselves regarding learning as much as we can. But its not ideal, and sometimes if there wasn’t something on the line for me at the end, I know I would have trouble motivating myself to learn and finish learning certain things…especially in the time crunch as students we are in. Actually, it’s not I know, it’s I do.

Just some thoughts on the issue. And Bud, its ok, you don’t have to say anymore ;D

In Shady Waters, 12/14/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Project Talk

Let me jump right in to the discussion. I liked the presentations today: everyone had some great stuff going on. I did share Lindsay’s concern in that I fear our team is lacking a “wizard.” I read Bud’s response and I know that we’ve all learned the same things in this class… but I still maintain that 2 months of looking at this material does not put us on the same level as a person who may have been looking at it for years. Even if you haven’t been learning the X-men exactly, learning about anything related to in-depth html, databases or any kind of code does put you a little ahead of others. But - don’t get me wrong - I’m not bitter or anything. I still love the class and it makes me feel smart. We’ve been trying hard and doing great. But it’s just frusterating when our hardest work looks so little next to someone else’s.

And I also agree with Lindsay’s great point about why it would be helpful to write something like SimpleTable. I know it’s tedious and probably not appropriate for BIT320 - but can you imagine how much easier it would be to “debug” a file if we knew exactly what every line in that file actually does? Sometimes when we have to figure out an error I feel so lost just staring at the screen. So, while BIT320 is excellent for the “big picture” - at some point it would be cool to write a file like that.

I like how BIT320 is kind to business majors. We love the big picture. And like Bud said and blogged today, it seems that one of the best things our team did was identify the problem and understand what the solution should look like. So when we’re out in the business world, we can at least say “hey, maybe this problem can be solved with a nice user-friendly web interface and a giant database… here’s what it would do, now who can we hire to write that up?” Which is similar to Matt’s opinion.

In jb's blog, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

RSS feed

Our team has a little question about the RSS portion of the project. We’re wondering what kind of functionality would you like us to have involving RSS? We have a couple of ideas on how we could feed, but we’re wondering what are some options or preferential ways to feed into (let’s say we have a website…what do we feed it to? is there anything else we should consider?). Though we haven’t gotten to it, we’d like to attempt this portion though we may not get it to work. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

In Pink Footsie, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

How to skin a moose?

Just like Bud and Tigerlily, I have to say I was quite impressed with the project presentations today. Like Tigerlily said,

“I kind of expected today’s class to be boring because I would have to listen to the same thing three times, but it wasn’t.”

The way in which we each attempted to approach the project was unique and really went to show that there is more than one way to skin the preverbial cat, or I guess in this case, the moose.

yond the slick and shiny interfaces shown off today, I was more excited about what working models mean: an understandinng of the technology. For a couple weeks, I knew I had an understanding of the X-team. But it wasn’t really until I dug my heals in and got my hands dirty that I realized that I didn’t know have as much as I thought I did, and at the same time, knew more than I thought I did. Does that make sense? On some level I think it does. Will all of us go off to our next jobs and say, “Hey, I can write XML?” Well, probably not. But we will be able to say with confidence, “Yeah, I’ve seen that before.”

Since the theme of the day is “value-added”….here’s a link to a listing of all the dairies producing moosetracks in the US. It may help you out adding real data to your databases.

In Matt's Musings, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Response for Supriya

Sorry for being a little vague. In my previous post, about supriya’s question I said you need to have ?RETAILERNAME=MEIJER (or whatever retailer you want) at the end of the URL for whatever page it is on. So in response to your recent post, it would be this url. I know you can do something so that it automatically comes up but we haven’t figured it out yet. Hope this helps.

In Tigerlily's Blog, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Supriya’s Question Suggestion

In her post, she said that their view didn’t return any rows (i think). We had a problem with having a bind variable that was text and we changed what he told us (which is the same thing he told you). We didn’t get anything to show up originally because with this type of bind parameter you can set a default. So we had to type ?container=5+gal, where container is the bind and 5+gal is what we want to find. This is typed at the end of the URL on that page. I did this for yours and added ?RETAILERNAME=MEIJER and it returned this:

&ltpage>
-
&ltROWSET>
-
&ltROW num=”1″>
&ltRETAILERNAME>MEIJER
&ltZIPCODE>00002
&ltSTORESTREET>543 BUD STREET
&ltSTORECITY>DETROIT
&ltSTORESTATE>MI
&ltSTOREPHONE>5233542654

-
&ltROW num=”2″>
&ltRETAILERNAME>MEIJER
&ltZIPCODE>00004
&ltSTORESTREET>243 JENNY DRIVE
&ltSTORECITY>SEATTLE
&ltSTORESTATE>WA
&ltSTOREPHONE>5234543577

I don’t know if you have tried this yet, but I hope it helps.

In Tigerlily's Blog, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Presentation and Project Thoughts

First let me say how amazing it is that three different groups working on the same problem that Denali is having, can have such different interpretations and presentations. I kind of expected today’s class to be boring because I would have to listen to the same thing three times, but it wasn’t. I think we have each succeeded at “adding value,” (at least a little value) to Denali in some form or another, now we just need to make ours (my group and the group that went second) as good as the last group that presented. I only wish we had whoever knows how to do all of that stuff in my group. On that note, I hope Bud takes into consideration that some of us are not as web-design-savvy as others.

In Tigerlily's Blog, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

I Share Matt’s OCD

Today while finishing up our project we checked out the results of our Customer Insert Form in Oracle. Turns out we found one of those blank numbers that SuperMatt and Matt have blogged about. Matt says:

Plus, the OCD side of me would flip out at a non-sequential number sequence in the database.

I agree; it really got on my nerves. We sat there trying to remember how to delete entries but decided we’d just have to let it go and push on with the rest of the presentation. First of all, does anyone know how to delete the blank numbers? I guess we’ll have to put up with the skips in sequence, but the blank rows are killer. (I assume you guys are also getting the blank rows… or is it just us?) Second, I completely agree that the next new number should be generated at some point after the page loads, if we are in fact correct in assuming that the number is generating upon the loading of the page. (Which was originially SuperMatt’s assumption.)

In jb's blog, 12/12/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Zvon XSL Tutorial

Interactive XSL training by examples

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/11/2005 | Original | Archive

Auto-number generator 002

SuperMatt recently blogged about the autonumber feature of our customer form. He points out that,

“Every time the webpage is loaded a new number is automatically, even if the last time the page was loaded you did not fill out an click add.”

He goes on to say that while this strategy makes sense, it introduces gaps in the number. Finally he poses a possible solution:

The best solution would be for the number to be generated when the add button is clicked. Is that a possibility? Are the problems associated doing it that way?”

Now I agree with SuperMatt here and wondered the same thing for myself. Plus, the OCD side of me would flip out at a non-sequential number sequence in the database. I think it would be possible to add the id at add time. All you would have to do is query the database for the last record added and add 1 to that number. I think this would work flawlessly almost 100% of the time. Am I wrong in assuming that this method wouldn’t allow two people to acquire the same id number at the same time?

In Matt's Musings, 12/10/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Auto-number generator

I was looking at the customer form, and I noticed something interesting about the auto number generating feature. Every time the webpage is loaded a new number is automatically, even if the last time the page was loaded you did not fill out an click add. Initially, this may seem counterintuitive because you might this that the next number when be loaded when you add something. However, this is actually makes more sense! Pretend that you have a larger database that has multiple people adding data, if it didn’t automatically then two people could try to add the same unique number at the same time, which would be a problem. One problem with this is that if you don’t add data when you have the form open or click refresh you end up with gaps in your numbers. If that was confusing let me give you a situation. Pretend that you have opened a web form and the current automatically generated number is 1005, if you close the window or click refresh the next time you see the form page the number generated will be 1006. Therefore there will not be a 1005, this could be confusion. The best solution would be for the number to be generated when the add button is clicked. Is that a possibility? Are the problems associated doing it that way?

In SuperMatt, 12/09/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Dreamweaver aint so dreamy!

We are working on our project and have a quick question for anyone who is familiar with dreamweaver. Basically we have set up a navigation bar on the bottom of the page and when we click on one of the buttons, we want the new page linked to show up within the frame and not in a new page (which is how we set it up right now). Does anyone know how to do that??

In zee124, 12/09/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Problems with Project 2

We tried to make one of our views show up as on the web page, but it didn’t work. We followed the same steps as we did for the other ones and even used the same template, which we knew worked. The odd thing is that there is no error…it just doesn’t show up on the web page. Here is the site I am talking about. Has anyone else had a problem like this?

In Tigerlily's Blog, 12/07/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

JB’s problems in her ice cream cone

JB’s group has an error. We are trying to create a customer input form. We can get the page up with the source. check it out here. But the problem we have is when we input information on a customer and we get an error that looks like this!

This is the code we used to insert the info. We pretty much took the examples from class and changed it to our specific case.

bind-params=”customerID zip flavor”>
BEGIN
INSERT INTO customer VALUES(?,?,?);
COMMIT;
END;

p>

Help us please…otherwise JB can’t eat her ice cream

In Shady Waters, 12/07/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Templa(e)tes

Just a random question: Are we going to be making our own templates to apply to project 2? Or are we just going to be given one to apply? I think it’d be really cool to test them out and see what looks good. I get excited now when it switches templates and I didn’t even make them, imagine if I did!

In zee124, 11/18/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

SQL, XML, & Ice Cream

A remixable web learning project at Michigan's Ross School of Business

BIT320 Remix — project2

Would you like no ‘ or two ‘’ ?

Server Side Up

Server Problem??

Servering Inconsistancies

Responding to Aga

Almost there: Please help

RSS Project Question, SuperMatt Goes for Bonus

RSS Question still not answered

Answering Supriya’s question from 30,000 feet

jbartko panics much too soon!

need more help please

sequence problems

More problems with number generator…Please Help!

Project Questions

Zeenah’s question

Question about Write Up

At the End of the Show

Project Talk

RSS feed

How to skin a moose?

Response for Supriya

Supriya’s Question Suggestion

Presentation and Project Thoughts

I Share Matt’s OCD

Zvon XSL Tutorial

Auto-number generator 002

Auto-number generator

Dreamweaver aint so dreamy!

Problems with Project 2

JB’s problems in her ice cream cone

Templa(e)tes

Of Special Note

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