Update & Documentation Submitted

[Week 31]

These past two weeks I've been very busy with the project and finishing off continuous assessment projects.

I started by looking at my method for generating the JTree. While taking Martin's comments on board I came up with a new method for constructing the tree correctly. This was great as I could then produce correct XPath expressions.

I moved onto to integrating Martin's code for querying. I learned about the SQL packages and classes that come with Java. More specifically which object to instantiate for passing an SQL statement, sending that to the database and collecting the results. This works well now and was a big milestone as I had then achieved all basic functionality with the project.

The meeting with Mark on Thursday was good as he gave some good suggestions on how to improve on what I had done. They were:
- Show before and after times (how my querying performs over eXist)
- Introduce the ability to specify a predicate on a node
- Introduce support for more datasets

I have managed to get basic predicates working. So a user may select a node, e.g. name and actually specify a name.

Martin provided me with lots more datasets. All XML files so I needed to write the schemas for these. I managed to complete this today. I may need to look into support attributes.

Submitted my Technical Specification, User Manual and Sample Code on Friday so good to get all that out of the way. I forgot to attach a print out of this blog, hopefully that will not be a problem. I'll contact GK tomorrow.

That's about it for now. It's time to focus on exams!

Update on progress with XSOM

[Week 29]

I managed to parse some XML schema files with XSOM, produce a tree and XPath expressions this week so decided it was good time to meet with MOC again.

He informed me that the tree I was producing was not fully correct for the XML schema I was using. Therefore I need to look at my parsing method again and adapt it correctly. If the tree is incorrect then it will produce incorrect XPath expressions. Therefore it is critical that I get this method correct.

We did discuss the next stages in detail and Martin has written code to insert XML documents into a relational database in a specialised way. He also has code to query the relational database. As part of my project specification I do not insert any data into a relational database. I do, however query it. Therefore I will use his Index Builder program to insert some XML documents into the database and integrate his query program with mine so that the XPath expressions produced from my program can be used to query the data.

I have arranged a meeting with MR for Thursday this coming week to go over the project so my next post will discuss how the integration of Martin's code went and the outcome of the meeting with MR.

Hello to XSOM, bye to Apache XML Schema

[Week 27]

I got a recommendation from a classmate to use XML Schema Object Model (XSOM) for the XML Schema parsing. I've looked into this and I'm glad to say after a few hours of studying the schema and search mailing list archives I'm managing to extract information from files.

I've am now moving on to try and build the tree to visually represent the XML schema.
I had a meeting with MOC on Thursday discussing the general progress of the project and the fact that I'm behind schedule. He encouraged me to continue working on getting the tree built so that a user may then build XPath expressions using my GUI. Once I have this working he suggested that we arrange another meeting to plan the next steps.

This sounds promising so hopefully I can get a fairly generic parsing process in place and the tree working soon.

Apache XML Schema not so good

[Week 26]

I've been spending the last few weeks trying to get used to the Apache XML Schema API so that I can begin to extract information from XML Schema files. This is proving quite a bit more complex than I imagined and has brought me way behind schedule.

I've been emailing the developers mailing list in search of support and have received some replies however I am still having problems extracting information. I may have to look into finding a completely different API for this.

Why does this bring me so behind schedule?
There are three main parts to the project:
- Parse XML Schemas and represent them in a GUI (I plan to use JTree)
- Allow the user to select nodes and produce the XPath expression
- Convert this to SQL and send query to a relational database and display
the results to the user.

Unless I can parse files then there is no way I can create the JTree so I need to fix this part before moving on. With other assignment deadlines at the moment this is proving difficult.

Commons XML Schema Model

[Week 21]

Commons XML Schema model is a general purpose schema model that can be used when a Java object tree representation of an Xml schema is required. -http://bit.ly/SUxXC

I found this API for processing XML schemas. It sounds like it will be perfect for my needs. Quite busy with continuous assessment projects at the moment. I will continue experimenting with this API as time allows and post back on project updates as soon as possible.