Java MDI, Multi DB application help

[stevanity]

Im not asking for home work help .I need a guide..

My teacher gave a huge project work for me. I have to develop an application that maintains basic info about all students in my college (every department and IV batches in each department). And I need to maintain their marks (Three internal exams and one semester exam).

I need to generate report about the marks also.

I have built small apps before but not one of this magnitude. this app must allow them to edit the db (i.e add subjects etc) Im trying to create model. But Its damn confusing.

I have one idea. Ill create a MDI app. And it will look like photoshop (parent window with only menu bar). So from menu bar they can choose a batch to edit and it will open a sub window that will allow them to manipulate the corresponding details.

I dont know how to procede.
Please can anyone PLEASE GUIDE me. I know you wont do homeworks for people.

But Im not asking you to do the coding. I need a guide. Every project has a guide. An expert. So please tell me where to start. I know basic Swing, dB programming.

Thank you.... Any links to online resources/tuts/ etc would also be welcome!!

THANK YOU>

PS: Again I say. Im not asking for home work help .I need a guide..

[peter_budo]

You will not get guide, but you may get tips/suggestions/advise. For example create parent frame. Attach panel and menu bar, with menu options for the bar. Menu options will refresh panel with child panel holding all components associated with what ever procedure you trying to do.

[stevanity]

I dont know how to proceed. Is my design ok? Please help me.

OK please give me suggestions.....

Will I be able to access multiple databases??

OMG. I thought you would give me a headstart. Tell me where to start with. Is there any book that deals with such apps?

[JamesCherrill]

It's going to be difficult for anyone to answer a question that's quite as wide open as this one.
You could look at a 3-layer architecture (GUI/object model/data persistence) - in which case start with the object model and define the classes and their public methods (these just need to match the functionality required in the spec), then go you can either up or down depending or your mood. I would not advise starting with the GUI, this often leads to you embedding the object model piece-by-piece right there in the GUI code resulting in a gigantic ball of spaghetti. Test the object model by hard-coding calls to its public methods before attempting to wire up a U.I.
By all means please post your ideas and problems here - the more specific the question, the easier it is to answer.

[peter_budo]

OMG. I thought you would give me a headstart. Tell me where to start with. Is there any book that deals with such apps?

You said you did not wanted other people d your homework, so I just gave you possible idea how to about GUI since you been struggling with the idea.
Follow also James advice on DB, ask specific questions, and there is only one book that will show you how to do it step-by-step life experience of trying and failing with some bright spot of success and appreciation.

[stevanity]

It's going to be difficult for anyone to answer a question that's quite as wide open as this one.
You could look at a 3-layer architecture (GUI/object model/data persistence) - in which case start with the object model and define the classes and their public methods (these just need to match the functionality required in the spec), then go you can either up or down depending or your mood. I would not advise starting with the GUI, this often leads to you embedding the object model piece-by-piece right there in the GUI code resulting in a gigantic ball of spaghetti. Test the object model by hard-coding calls to its public methods before attempting to wire up a U.I.
By all means please post your ideas and problems here - the more specific the question, the easier it is to answer.

Thank you for your Reply....

So you basically want me to create an OO design of the project right?
And create classes for department, student etc? And populate them with data from database? and then populate the UI with this data?

That would be weired wouldn't it?

I mean, you need to instantiate all those student objects etc................. And so on.. OOOOHHHH IM TOTALLY CONFUSED!

[JamesCherrill]

So you basically want me to create an OO design of the project right?
And create classes for department, student etc? And populate them with data from database? and then populate the UI with this data?

That's how real Java developers do it in the real world...
You'll have to get used to that sooner or later...

ps. This is your project, so you can do it any way you chose, but there's a reason why people do the object model thing - in the long run it's the easiest. Good software is 80% design and 20% coding.

[stevanity]

Could you provide links to tutorials that teach about designing in OO mode?

My idea is to create a class that represents a department. Then derive subclasses for each Batch (Iyr, IIyr, III and IV yrs ) then derive subclasses to represent ClassA and classB.

Now I need to store the entire data in a database. And then when the user selects a particular class, I need to Open that database, read the info and construct objects and populate the objects with those data.
Then I need to Create a J Table to display that data.

OK. Its all fine. But If I edit the Jtable, will it be reflected ??

[stevanity]

AHHHH! I found out! Ill use JPA with ObjectDB. Is it ok? And what is JDO?

Which is better? I Cant find a good resource to learn from. Could anyone provide books about JDO?

[JamesCherrill]

My suggestion: don't try to use any of those frameworks/applications/libraries at this stage. They are pretty complex, have steep learning curves of their own, and are designed to avoid or solve problems that you don't understand yet.
IMHO you should do this one by coding it yourself; in that process you will learn a lot, and what you learn will enable you to benefit from more advanced tools later.
In my mind this is an exact parallel to the way that we usually advise people to start with an editor and a command prompt before moving on to a full-blown IDE.

Anyone else want to offer an opinion on this?

[JamesCherrill]

My idea is to create a class that represents a department. Then derive subclasses for each Batch (Iyr, IIyr, III and IV yrs ) then derive subclasses to represent ClassA and classB.

Don't confuse classes and instances. Batch may well be a good class, in which case you will have four instances of it, not subclasses. It's just like Student class - you don't have a subclass for each student, just an instance for each student

[stevanity]

Yeah. I mistyped that.

But reading result sets and updating objects would be really tedious without persistence, woulnt it? I really wanna use JDO here. please help.

[JamesCherrill]

I honestly can't claim enough expertise in JDO to be able to guide anyone. Maybe someone else can step in here? If you start a new topic specifically about JDO someone will notice.

[stevanity]

OK Thanks As always.