This year, I decided to embark the journey for the second time to participate in the Open Jive Regional Challenge 2009 in mid-June in Singapore.
Last year, it was my baby step in participating Java Jive Regional Challenge 2008.
The reasons I decided to participate for the second round were firstly because I would like to contribute to my school before I graduate next February. Secondly, I want to catch up with the Java technologies especially in web technologies since after Java Jive Competition, it inspired me to be in web application development rather than the software development. Thirdly, since my juniors were participating, so then I was told to assist in training the juniors in J2EE and MySQL. Through training them, I re-capped what I have learned previously and also to pass down to my juniors rather keeping the knowledge to myself. Isn’t it to be selfish by keeping knowledge to yourself? Oh well, I rather think it is kinda selfish.
Forming the Team
This year’s competition, my group recruited a new student to the competition. Basically, 2 of us were the previous participants. Basically, we were from the same class but because of our specializations, we were separated from module classes. I’m from the eBusiness, Joel is from Software Engineering and Dennis is from Networking. So I thought it would be a good combination of expertise and knowledge in this competition.
Innovations and Ideas
After forming the team into 3 members, we went ahead to brainstorm on the innovations and ideas for the competition. Firstly, I thought of a business idea since the world is facing economic recession. My members and I gave a thought of a business idea to help businesses to have bridge or a platform to communicate and to share projects between them. Furthermore, I thought of Business Intelligence as the innovation as well. Due to some reason, the idea was not feasible as further discussion was discussed with our facilitator. After the discussion with our facilitator, I further search for world issues that the world is facing right now since the competition was about solving world issues and to change for tomorrow. What I did was to google for “World Issues” . To my surprise, environmental issue was the first in the result list. From there, as a team and with our facilitator went ahead in this idea on environmental issue to nail on.
J2EE Training
After our team was shortlisted for the competition, our facilitator planned a training session for the juniors who also participating the competition. The facilitator was supposed to carry out the training as well as teach in the training but due to some reasons that she had to schedule remedial lessons for her module classes. My friend, Nicholas who also participated in the competition and I carried out the training . Basically, I was only to assist Nicholas in training. From the training, I re-capped on my J2EE knowledge.
Development
After the training session, as scheduled, we carried out our development work as per normal but before development, we carried out the design phase in a SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) manner. As a team, we brainstormed for the best colour combination in the website design as related to environmental theme. Basically, a few colours came to our mind, and they were brown, green and blue. We decided to use green as our website colour to give the user a perception that we are trying to do environmental conservation. The overall user interface was started with storyboarding to visualise how the contents are placed in the design. From the storyboarding, the user interface was design by one of our members, Dennis. He did the user interface in Photoshop software. From the design in the Photoshop, the user interface was converted to a template with html codes.
Since our web application involves a login information, a different template will be used when the user is logged in (with session variable). So how do we display different templates when the user is logged in or not logged in? We actually did the include file in jsp (JavaServer Pages). The include file ensures that we need know to re-create the user interface using html codes over and over again. For this part, I was the one who helped in the logic and work on the include files.
Moreover, our web application involves jQuery Ajax. One of our members, Joel was the one who involved in working with the jQuery Ajax. Basically, as a team, we used the jQuery javascript file which netbeans has provided by including the javascript framework to the project.
Besides working with my team, I also work with my junior group because it was their first time in participating the competition and they needed help since the facilitator was busy. Their help was on the MySQL database. As I helped them to troubleshoot the MySQL database connection in Netbeans, I learned through re-capping my mistakes and not repeat them again. The reason that they were unable to connect to the MySQL database even though MySQL connector was seen in the Netbeans services. The problem was the project was not configured to use the MySQL database JConnector which apparently the connector was not registered into the project.
During the developments, both of our groups stayed in school to help each other. My group nearly stayed overnight to work on the project.
Presentation Day – 17 June 2009
My group’s presentation day was on 17 June 2009 (Wednesday) in the afternoon after lunch. This year, I found the arrangement in scheduling the groups was good because of the timer given in the judging room. Last year, my group’s schedule was delayed because of the morning teams who presented quite long. So this year, the arrangement was pretty controlled since everyone was on time in ending their presentation. One problem, my group faced in the judging room was the projector because of the resolution problem when we tried to demo our product. Thankfully, the judges allowed us to take some time to adjust the projector resolution. I started off the ball rolling with presentation and followed by the demo by the guys (another 2 members in my team). I found the question and answer session rather interesting and challenging since we were here to convince the judges our product. Basically, my group missed by a chance to be in the winnings. As what my facilitator mentioned, it was a spot on question from Mr Naveen. The question was the same as what my facilitator mentioned to me before the presentation day. I did not take heed from her because my team was rushing on the jQuery Ajax work.
Award Presentation Day & Project Wonderland seminar – 18 June 2009
Around noon, I reached ITE East Simei for the Project Wonderland seminar since I needed a long rest because of the overclock I did during the development. Project Wonderland was the new technology I came across. Previously was JavaFx but here you have Project Wonderland works in Virtual World. It do sounds like Sims game.
7 teams were notified that they will be in the Singapore Challenge Finals. One of the teams was from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Team Undefined. They ended up claimed the Sun Participation Age Award.
Sun Developer Day 2009
Due to personal reason, this year, I did not get the chance to attend the Sun Developer Day 2009.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this competition like the previous years allowed me to go into web applications development, gain experiences and learn from the experts.
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