Sunday, June 21, 2009

The overdue progress report

Apologies for not blogging as much as I should. I've focused on getting what needed to be done, done.

Tasks that have been completed thus far with a target milestone of using a mock Form, enable persistence of Questions and Values to the database:

  • Mock out a report form using the domain classes
  • Using the mocked up schema, generate a simple report form
  • Design the SQL Schema (for just FacilityDataValue and FacilityDataQuestion)
  • Write Hibernate Mapping files (for just FacilityDataValue and FacilityDataQuestion)
  • Write Data Access layer (for FacilityDataValue and FacilityDataQuestion)
  • Write Service layer (for FacilityDataValue and FacilityDataQuestion)
  • Refactor the rendering logic to use the JSP and write EL function(s) to check types using instanceof.
  • Allow a simple the mocked form from Week 1 to save the question answers.


Tasks that are are in progress, soon to be finished with a target milestone of removing the code used to mock up everything from the first few weeks; ability to use the saved schemas for rendering the report form:

  • Design SQL Schema for the rest of the domain classes
  • Write mappings for the rest of the domain classes
  • Support loading the previously saved values for a form/startdate/enddate/location into a page for viewing or editing
  • Write methods to save the rest of the domain classes in the data access layer
  • Write methods to save the rest of the domain in the service layer

Now that I have summarized work completed and in progress, let's explain the overall design:

  1. FacilityDataFormSchema serves as the overall representation of the report form in the system.
  2. FacilityDataFormSection is simply that, sections on the form, e.g., monitoring equipment status, stock status of vaccinations, number of people vaccinated, etc.
  3. FacilityDataFormQuestion holds metadata regarding a question.
  4. FacilityDataQuestion is the question itself; it specifies the datatype; it is subclassed for each question datatype; if not subclassed, then the question is considered to be "freetext" -- in other words: just simply a text-based question.
    1. CodedQuestion is a question that has a coded answer. This too is subclassed for each coded question datatype.
      1. StockQuestion is exactly as the name says, to track stock of items such as vaccinations. The coded answers are: "not_stocked_out","stocked_out","expired","not_applicable"
      2. BooleanCodedQuestion is a simple "yes","no","not applicable" type of thing; e.g., "Was there mobile clinic today?"
    2. NumericQuestion is a question which has a numeric answer, e.g., "Number of Adults Vaccinated."
  5. FacilityDataValue is what holds the values entered in the report forms for each question.
  6. FacilityDataReportFormData is a non-persisted class used for retrieving the answers for a specific report for a specified period.

Hopefully this makes up for my lack of updates.

Friday, June 12, 2009

The long overdue progress report

This is gonna be short, sweet and to the point:

Week 1:
  1. I wrote a mock report form with 10 questions (screenshots in a later post)
  2. I then wrote up some code to render it approriately for each question type.

Week 2 (still ongoing):
  1. Designed the SQL schema, and wrote the service/database layer classes for 2 of the classes.
  2. Wrote in the functionality to save the report data to the database.


Will explain the design at a later date.

Ciao!