Monthly Archives: March 2011

Mike 3.31.2011

  • Got the image element working within reports
  • Got the navigation tree and scroll to section functionality working
  • Expand all and collapse all buttons are now working
  • Started looking at deep linking and url links within reports…

From within a report a user will be able to link to both external websites and link internal components such as opening a different report through a text link.  Users will also be able to link to specific reports / saved desktops from external sources using deep linking.

Looked in the to the ability to use hrefs from within flex components.  Link coloring is defined from within style sheets and without any definitions they will blend in with the rest of the text.  It is also possible to modify the href url so a flex event is thrown instead of immediately opening  a new webpage.  This will allow me fine grain control over how links in text behave.  More details are listed here.

Phil 3.31.11

7:30 – 5:00 VISIBILITY

  • They are calling for snow tomorrow. That is the same tomorrow that is the first day of April tomorrow. The one that is 12 days into spring. That tomorrow. Here’s hoping it’s an April fools prank and that it will actually be 72 and sunny!
  • Adding an actionscript computed F test class. Done and working. Going to extend that to handle contrasts
  • Tomorrow:
    • Add contrast columns
    • Extend Ftest class to ComplexContrast class
    • Add adjustments for number of contrasts and pre-post hoc.

Mike 3.30.2011

  • Continuing to work on making the the Reporting UI work with data from the database
  • Have a full text report loading from the database and displaying through a ‘File > Open…’ menu system
  • Got the navigation tree working for the report (minus the scroll to selection bit)

Still need to add the following for it to be up to the prototype’s perceived capability

  • Tables
  • Scroll to navigation
  • Document search
  • Comments integration

Christine 03.30.2011

Wow. Just realized it’s been a while since I put in an entry. This is why I don’t keep my own blog.

  • Last week I spent time looking at the differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4 and how that would affect the the Ingest Manager rewrite (utilities it will be using since some are still Flex 3)
  • Created the initial Ingest Manager layout in Maven format and imported into Eclipse.
  • Keeping with F4, wrote code using containers for multiple content areas (breaking up header, footer and main content).
  • Incorporating ManagementUtils LoginScreen into code
  • Continue to receive a maven error on project build, even though it hasn’t affected my output. I also can’t seem to fix the issue. Has anyone seen the following error before:

    3/30/11 1:41:40 PM EDT: [ERROR] .m2/repository/com/adobe/flex/framework/spark/4.0.0.14159/spark-4.0.0.14159.swc(spark/components/SkinnableContainer):[-1,-1] Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: [mx.core]::IDeferredContentOwner.
    3/30/11 1:41:40 PM EDT: Build errors for IngestManagerF4; org.apache.maven.lifecycle.LifecycleExecutionException: Failed to execute goal org.sonatype.flexmojos:flexmojos-maven-plugin:3.8:compile-swf (default-compile-swf) on project IngestManagerF4: Error compiling!

  • Found some fun URL issues when initially created the pom. In the original Ingest Manager, http://viz-n.com/ is used instead of fgmdev.com:8081. This was causing me a headache until I discovered the fix. Was that the original URL before fgmdev.com:8081?

Phil 3.30.11

7:30 – 6:30 VISIBILITY

  • Installing updates – windows, java, adobe. Let’s see if we can break *everything*!
    • I broke most things. A fix that is mentioned a lot in the forums and helped me was to UNINSTALL all my old Java SDKs/JDKs/JREs and then install the newest one fresh. After that, all was well
  • The computer is running faster now, though…
  • Doctor’s appt at 9:15
  • Going to try to write a straight F test function using R.
  • Checking up on the state of my account on the new server
    • Turns out that you need an ADMIN account to request a root account for a server. Put in a ticket. I wonder what’s going to be next?
  • Spent some time looking at the programming OOP in R. Looks doable, but different enough from C++/Java/Actionscript that I’m going to get a book. In the meantime, I’m going to calculate the F statistic in Actionscript and hand that off to the qf(.05,dfnum,dferror,lower.tail=F) function in R to see what I can do with it that way. In a way, it’s kind of nice, in that the processing load is kept on the client.

Phil 3.29.11

7:30 – 6:30 VISIBILITY

  • I think the new Firefox is slowing down my computer…
  • Added a lot of post hoc tests into the ANOVA widget. In the process, I discovered something really cool here: http://psych.wisc.edu/moore/Rpdf/610-R3_post-hoc_one-way_betw.pdf. It turns out that you can get the straight critical F values directly out of R using this:
    • qf(.05,dfnum,dfdenom,lower.tail=F)
  • Yes, I know that doesn’t seem all that awesome, but it does mean that I can put some functions together to calculate these things from the basic math, and get some of the flexibility that I’ve been looking for. Whee!
  • Applied for an account on our newly active server.
  • Copied all the webapps folders and sql databases to move over to the new server.

Phil 3.28.11

7:30 – 6:30 VISIBILITY

  • It’s freaking cold outside.
  • Filled out server paperwork
  • Found some R code that will run Dunnett. It runs on fgmdev too!
  • Loaded up a new version to fgmdev. Minor fixes. Dunnett tomorrow?
  • Discussion with Mike about versions of BlazeDS
  • Asked Dong to put script output directly into VISIBILITY rather than having a table viewer.

Dong Shin 03.25.2011

  • WebIDE
    • worked with Phil to sort out read input stream issues
    • “bash -i” should not be used as it just echoes the prompts to std out
    • “csh -i” seems working well
    • non Windows OS grabs the prompt matching regex, “\[.*\].*%\s” (Java formatted, may have to tweak it to work with other OS)
    • checked into the SVN

Phil 3.25.11

7:30 – 11:30 VISIBILITY

  • Swung by the customer site
    • Talked to John W. All development funding is done. There is a little maintenance money. THere are developer dollars to do something with Sharepoint. I reiterated that integrating VISIBILITY with Sharepoint is pretty straightforward, and far easier than re-implementing in Silverlight or HTML5.
    • Wrote up a list of the software and versions that we will need on the new PPM server and sent to Brian
    • Read in on my privac.
  • Leaving early today for air conditioning spring maintenance.
  • Worked on diagnosing the Runtime.exec() problem with Dong
  • Brought Brian up to speed on how things have been going.

Dong Shin 03.24.2011

  • playing with Phil’s WebIDE projects
    • struggling to get the Runtime.getTuntim().exec() to work in OS X environment
    • initiated it with ‘sh -i’, tried bash, csh,…. none is better than the others
    • found that Windows code waits for ‘C:’ prompt
    • Mac’s doesn’t return any prompt, gets stuck at BufferedReader.readLine()
    • put a Timer in there and experimented with it, couldn’t return control to continue the code execution, but this may be the way to go
    • will experiment on the Linux box here at the office.

Mike 3.24.2011

Continuing the work on storing reports information in a database

  • Since reports need owners I spent a little time making a User object and a service for handling users including a log-in screen with password changing, it’s pretty much ready for use minus moving it to some shared server project and mavenizing any required imports
  • Now able to create and stored reports from Flex to MySQL (or pretty much any database) from code on the Flex side, there’s currently no GUI support for creating reports

The basic format I have for storing reports is:

  • A Report object has an id, an owner (User), an xml string storing layout information, and a collections of ReportSections.  The xml layout simply defines how the sections are laid out and relative to each other and any text headers, more could be added later.
  • A ReportSection has an id, an owner (possibly different from the Report owner), a type string, and a data string, as well as references to any report which currently contains it.  The idea is a ReportSection can be almost anything (some text, a data table, a chart, an images, etc.), so we’ll store a string defining it that the UI can use to figure out what to display.  It’s data string may be some html text, a url for an image, or some xml data for a table.
  • Finally, Comments have also been added to the database.  Currently a Comment has an id, a date created, an owner, and text.  The plan is to have Comments referenced from what they are commenting on.  So a user may comment on an image in a report; that ReportSection would have references to the comments made on it and could be loaded by id.

Next on the todo list:

  • Get a report loaded from the display and displayed in the framework, currently I’ve only looked at report information in the Flex debugger
  • Add support for tables, currently only text sections are being stored
  • Add support for images
  • Get the SCT report in to the database
  • Test this thing out by putting the FGM website in it

That should keep me busy for awhile

Phil 3.24.11

8:00 – 5:30 VISIBILITY

  • Got my new leather mouse to match my leather mousepad. Need a leather computer and keyboard 🙂
  • Doing more upgrades on the R install on fgmdev. Here’s hoping nothing breaks. Pretty much everything is out of date.
  • Well, I got 25 errors, but didn’t break anything.
  • Talked to Dong about the problems that he’s having with Runtime.exec() on the Mac
  • Having Tom install the VISIBILITY suite on one of FGM VA’s servers
  • Initial work on adding in MANOVA and MANCOVA
  • Walked through table issues with Mike.
  • Webinar on cloud computing at 2:00: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=292186&s=1&k=69E5FCD268EA18FC4E0A060B96973886

Tom.DeVito 3-23.2011

Arduino Audio:

  • Some commands need two bytes of data sent from the computer to the arduino.  For these commands I added a serial.read() after they happen to get the second byte.
  • Mostly done with the sketch for audio control.  Only a couple more functions to code.
  • Once I get this working I will try to read the strain gauge amplifier with the arduino.