Sam Record (srecord@ccs.neu.edu) (NU ID 388-82-6792)
COM3360
Fall 1997

Project: Implement a "help desk" application using both Demeter/Java
         and plain Java.

Directory: /proj/demsys/com3360-f97/srecord/project/stageX, where X
           = 1, 2, or 3. Each directory contains all files from that
           stage of development. (See history.txt in the project
           directory for a more detailed description of the stages)
           stage1: Minimal functionality.
           stage2: Added file output and some additional use cases.
           stage3: Added GUI.

Note: All work was done on a Linux system; code may need to be recompiled.

Credits: I made extensive use of the LibrarySystem application code
         from the online labguide, especially in the early stages of
         the project.  It was quite useful as a starting point and
         building block.
         For the GUI code which I added in stage 3, I used examples
         from "The Java Tutorial" by Mary Campione and Kathy Walrath
         (Addison/Wesley).

Class Dictionary: HelpDesk.cd, found in the home directory of each
                  stage. (helpdesk.cd/apcd/gcd in the project home
                  directory contains the original draft)

Growth plans: see history.txt.

Points for future growth:
  These can be found in abundance. :-)
  A more robust querying capability is sorely needed.
  Multiple users should be supported. This would involve adding
  synchronization code, at least.
  Scalability is an issue. How will the system respond with
  larger amounts of data? This could be addressed by:
    splitting "SampleData" into multiple physical files so that all
      the data doesn't have to be read at once during initialization
    making use of more efficient data structures and algorithms, i.e.
     hashed lookup instead of linear search through a list
  The GUI code uses the now-deprecated API.  It should be updated.
  In general, the GUI needs a lot of work.  It works OK, but is not
  very friendly right now.
  The ...Dialog classes in the GUI are crying out to have much of
  their code merged into a common ancestor.
  The GUI should be rewritten so that the HelpDeskGUI class inherits
  from Applet.

Bugs:
  Some strings have to be entered with quotes, while others don't.
  This is especially a problem with the GUI.
  The GUI dialogs don't behave well. Namely:
    the Query dialog can't be closed w/o exiting the whole application
    the dialogs all cover their parent, even though they aren't modal
    the layouts and field widths need to be fine-tuned
  When you attach a staff or user ID to a request or modification, the
  ID isn't properly validated.

Test inputs:
  All input is in the stageX/SampleData files.

Test outputs:
  oops...

Area for improved behavior:
  Again, the query facility stands out.  It is quite minimal right now.

No changes to generated Java code were necessary (although, as noted,
the GUI classes were written in pure Java.)