[OKC JUG] Guidance

[Jason Lee]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Jackie Oram <grndrt1 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm currently using Netbeans IDE 6.1 with GlassFish V2 to develop my
> project.  The error listing that I previously wrote about is not a server
> log.  My users will be reporting data that must adhere to error validation
> before loading into Oracle tables.  A report will be returned to the user
> stating information about their data submission:  number of records,
> elements flagged as errors, no errors found, etc...
>

I'm a bit confused as to what, exactly, the application does.  Is it simply
reporting a list of errors currently stored in the database, or is it taking
input from the users, validating it, and then reporting errors from that
data set?

Either way, I think (and I know some people who are going to laugh at me)
that JSF is a fine solution for that.

Trying to sketch out the architecture over email is difficult at best,
especially given the information we have, but I'll shoot from the hip.  My
guess is that the user will be uploading a data file of some sort (since
they will be told "the number of records").  If that's true (and I'm going
to be making a BUNCH of guesses and assumptions here), then you have (or
will have) a set of model classes to hold the data uploaded (the file is
uploaded, and the data read and stored in one or more classes).  That's
probably how I'd do it at least.  With the uploaded data, you'd probably
have a List of data objects which you would then pass to the validation
code.

This part of the code does what it should and stores validation
errors...somewhere.  How you handle this will vary from developer to
developer.  From the hip, you might create a ValidationError object that
holds a reference to the data object that failed validation, with its
attributes being something like myDataObject, validationErrorMessage.  If
the list returned is non-null or non-empty, send the user to a page that
lists the error message.  If desired, prefered, possible, etc., this table
could then have a link to an edit page for the user to correct the
validation error.  You may opt, though, to report which records have errors
and require the user to fix them locally, and then reupload the data.  That
requirement will be driven more by the business than any real technology
question, as any web framework worth its salt can handle either scenario
easily.

Either way, once the data passes with no validation errors, it can be
passed, for example, to the data access layer for persisting in the
database.  Up to this point, this data would likely be held in memory (if
the dataset is not too long) as an instance variable on your session-scoped
bean.  At any rate, the data is sent to its final destination, any instance
vars holding state are cleaned up (or nulled out) and the user is sent to a
"success" page.

How does that sound? :P  Like I said, it's from the hip, so it probably
needs work, but should, I hope, give you a push in the right direction.  I
helped, if ever so slightly, on a very similar system at IEC, for what
that's worth.

I hope that helps (and doesn't overwhelm.  That's a lot of text. :)

-- 
Jason Lee, SCJP
Software Architect -- Objectstream, Inc.
Mojarra and Mojarra Scales Dev Team
https://mojarra.dev.java.net
https://scales.dev.java.net
http://blogs.steeplesoft.com
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