Mike 1.25.2011

  • Still waiting on the customer to suggest a beta test site, she said she would get back to me this week
  • Still backing up the database / checking on the server every day
  • Working with Kristi on the Documentation for Project Assistant,  hopefully we can get it up on SVN and deploy a first draft at site this week
  • Refreshed my memory on proper domain model diagrams and looked at a few free tools that do it, MySQLWorkbench seems to be the best, you can create your model/diagram then the program will create a database schema for you
  • Spent the rest of the day looking at PDF generation libraries as it would be a handy for lots of different tasks: generating reports for visibility, generating reports for PPM, etc.  There are several options:
    • iText seems to be the most widely adopted.  It has lots of documentation, examples and is pretty straightforward to use.  It has a very complicated licensing / pricing structure though.
    • PDFJet is a fairly established option with documentation, examples, and almost as many features as iText.  It also has a simple flat commercial licensing fee of $295.
    • PDF Clown is the last reasonable option I saw.  It is the least developed of the three lacking even an automatic layout however it is completely open source.