8:00 – 4:30 VISIBILITY

• Backups are working smoothly, and the size of the backup is growing more slowly. Most of the data must be in the DB by now
• Testing Dong’s PPM code
  • Narrower clamp on comboboxes in Project Management
  • Tooltips in project management comboboxes
• Looooooooong discussion with Mike about data architecture for Vis4
• Meeting with Anne? Yep – showed all of the VISIBILITY suite. Not sure what happens next

FP –

• Brought in wire for Tom

7:30 – 3:30 VISIBILITY

• Deployed cpPlusDate and mvPlusDate, which are working just fine
• Made backups
• Talked to John W. He’s going to try to set a demo of PPM with Kathy and the new TD for early next week.
• Chris(tine) has finished Flex in a Week. She sent me a not asking what to look at next. I said to look through AirFilImageApp to get aquainted with a larger project, and start to get familiar with Maven and the flex-mojos. Once she’s done with that, she can start updating MavenAssist to build Air apps correctly.
• Digging into FlexXB
  • General description: http://code.google.com/p/flexxb/wiki/GeneralDescription
  • No luck. FlexXB doesn’t recurse down the tree. Moving on…
• Worked with Dong on getting a new version of PPM to play with the browser window a bit better
• Since I really don’t want to build a generic serializer (again!). I’m thinking about the components that all our applications seem to need. The thought is that maybe we build some higher-level components that have self-serializing functionality that can be put together in simpler ways than a straight mxml experience. My list of visual components so far is:
  • Login
  • DB Table/column browser
  • Charts
    • The regular, data, bar, column, pie
    • Unusual – maps, status, network
  • Data grids
    • for looking at tables of numbers or…
    • Excel-style spreadsheets
  • Data entry forms
  • Formatted output
  • Special widgets, such as speedometer-style displays
• To make this work we need a communication framework to the server that either simply (or automatically) sets up tables to talk to these forms.
• Lastly, there needs to be an authoring/administrative level that creates ids for applications (to aid with data partitioning), and that supports our scripting.

7:00 – 4:30 – VISIBILITY

• Deployed my new copy, which works fine, though it has one diagnostic print statement in it. Need to fix that
• Fixed the bugs, and added move capability. The executable looks at the name it was called when executed and adjusts its behavior. If the file is called cpPlusDate, it will copy. If it’s called mvPlusDate, it will move. Uploaded the files to my ftp site (since we still need CDs!), to deploy on Monday. Also committed to subversion.
• Looking at ways to have a user build a form online and then use it.
  • Read the xml on the server side and have it compiled (http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=apache_3.html). This doesn’t allow for graphical creation of the component though.
  • Serialize as xml:
    • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/270046/flex-xml-serialization-and-de-serialization-of-nested-object-structures
    • http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_Serializing_object_to_XML-11988.html
  • Serialize the top level object using the ByteArray class (http://www.kylehayes.info/2008/01/06/Persisting-an-ActionScript-Data-Model/). This would need the following:
    • A container class that knows how to read and write a serialized object to the server
    • That the app exist entirely inside the above container.
    • The question is – will this store the entire hierarchy under that object in a way that will work later?
  • I like this better because it has the ability to graphically lay out the form. There would be two fundamental types of containers – an Authoring container and a Player container. The authoring container would have the code to lay out the form (and set up the tables on the server?). The player would simply load and show. Aaaaaaaaaaand it doesn’t work. Turns out not all the data for a display object gets stored this way. Seems to only work for value objects.
  • Trying out FlexXB. Changed the compiler options to preserve meta data
  • Set up my path so that the mxmlc compiler can be reached from the command line

8:00 – 4:30 VISIBILITY

• Deployed new version of PPM. The comboboxes are still getting too big on the filter section in the Project Navigator
• Backed up PPM db – it’s growing about 5k/day
• Looking into writing a copy utility in C++. Done, all 8k of it.
• Discussions with Brian and Mike about forecasting and how to tie it in with the Visibility4 baseline
  • The idea is to have a framework that can load SWF ‘apps’ that communicate through a singleton mediator (DataDictionary?).
  • Mike’s going to see how the basics of swf loading and management work