Nothing like starting small...

I had nearly forgotten what it was like to start from scratch.

Actually, I think that I did forget what it was like to start from scratch.

I have been programming professionally for twenty years now. And except for toy projects - only about three years of that time was spent working on projects that started in my head. Everything else has been upgrades and changes to significant code bases started by someone else.

And even the current focus of my professional work (which started in my own head) is two years since its start. Even it feels like working on an established code base. Many of the decisions that were made on design/implementation choices were just the farthest reach of what I knew how to do.

Now, I know a lot more than I did then - And that makes things more complicated when deciding which approaches I should use for AccSys.

Well, the going is slower than I thought it would be -

But it is going!

Finally (geeze).

It's time to start...

Well, I haven't really had a chance to do the kind of design that I hoped on my G/L - But, time keeps slipping by.

So, I'm going to go ahead and start work (using the semi-congealed design that is floating around in my head). And, as I have time, I'll continue working on the formal design.

(Note to self: I should really use this new beginning as an opportunity to do test driven coding - rather than trying to do all of my testing by hand after the work is finished).

The next big thing...

Some time ago, I managed to build up a sufficiently large ego as to think that I would be able to write a good accounting system from scratch.

I went ahead and started a project on Google Code called 'accsys'.

Soon after creating the project, I became overwhelmed with life and work - and my dream of a good, free, web based accounting system that would also be accessible through web services fell to the wayside.

Life and work have not calmed down since then - they have probably only gotten more hectic. But, I don't want to put off starting this any longer.

So, I'm not going to. Today marks the beginning of the design phase of my project. Over the next two weeks, I should have enough time to work out the general framework and the data structures for the first module (general ledger).

If you would like to keep up with the progress of my new baby - here is the URL of the project home page: http://code.google.com/p/accsys/

I will also make updates here to track my progress.

My last 'new favorite thing' of 2008...

I am not sure how long it will last, but I have a new favorite thing:

Stateful session EJBs (SFSBs)

I have been working with some fairly massive (and complex) data structures that I have been reloading from my database every time I needed to do a query or modification. And now, it looks like I may be able to stop doing this!

There will be some fairly radical changes necessary to really take advantage of SFSBs - but I am expecting the speed improvements to more than justify the work.

Yay! I like new toys.

Trying out new toys...

Up until now, I have been perfectly happy to only use stateless session beans in my application.

And, I have been able to do a lot of optimization to speed up the user's experience.

But, if I can avoid reloading large data structures every time the user is making a change to them - then that should be an additional (and possibly very large) speed boost.

Plus, I would be able to make changes to the data structure separate from the back end database without trying to cache it on the browser - which would be a nightmare!

So, I am finally going to try to use a stateful bean. If it works (if I manage to make it work) then I'll get to rewrite a -lot- of code to take advantage of stateful beans.

If it doesn't work, then at least I already have everything working with stateless.

OMDB!

I never mentioned it, but I did manage to do an initial stab at making an AppEngine version of my origami model diagram database (omdb).

For grins, you can try it out.

Here are the address formats to request information:
http://omdb.appspot.com/getDesigner?designerFirstName=&designerLastName=

http://omdb.appspot.com/getAuthor?authorFirstName=&authorLastName=

If you enter something that does not exist, then it creates it and adds back to the data store. If you have the record ID, then you can replace the names with designerID= or authorID= - respectively.

There are pages for origami models and books, but there is no nice way to find something unless you already know everything about it - not very useful yet.

This is harder than it looks...

I'm not sure where I got the idea that doing a blog would be easy.

I have enough 'life' going on, that there is no natural time for blogging.

So, I am going to try (or at least try to try) to do a minimal amount of blogging by forcing myself to enter -something- on a regular schedule. And then, if something noteworthy comes up, then I'll blog it as it comes up.