Friday, December 18, 2009

Final Thought on ICS 613 Software Engineering

Finally, the semester is over. After taking the ICS 613, here's my final thought of the course.

Positive Aspect:

This is the real-world trainng of software engineering experience. I really enjoy the tought assignments in this class because I believe that is the best way of training myself to become a better software developer. I've learnt a lot of new practices as well as experienced in team environment. The professor, Dr. Johnson, is also very passionate about the subject. I believe that he might had spent a lot of additional time preparing the screencast lectures for the class.

Negative Aspect:

This class is very time-consuming both on the programming assignment and writting the blog. It's both programming and writting intensive. I've spent about 75% of my time working for this class alone. Fortunately, my other classes didn't have much work.

In conclusion, I would recommend this class to every ICS students but also make sure that you don't take two programming intensive classes at the same semester.

Ekolugical Carbonometer 2.1

Ekolugical Carbonometer is a web application that developed in Wicket by team Ekolu. This application is the gateway to data of power grid on the Oahu island. In addition to the improvement of the existing pages (stoplight and grid info) from previous version (1.0), the new version (2.1) also includes three new pages which are Grid visualization, Source summary, and Carbon Intensity page. The section below is the summary of the system improvement.

Main Page: Provides brief description of each pages. Also the layout of the main page has been updated to be consistent with the rest of the system. Instead of wicket URL, the new system also provides the bookmarkable URL for each page.

Current Carbon Intensity Page: this is formerly the Stoplight page. This page use the stoplight to indicate the status of the carbon intensity level of Oahu grid at the current hour. In addition, it also provides useful tips accordingly to the status. The tip is also updated in every ten seconds.

Grid Information: display the power data in chart view. Three major improvements of the page includes the calculation of data period of each granularity option, the use of ajax-style for processing the chart, and the update of chart Y-axis based on the dataset.

Grid Visualization: presents power data in a visualization mode. The system provide user an option to include multiple power data in the chart.

Daily Carbon Intensity: display the daily carbon intensity information of the Oahu grid. The stoplight-mode also available on this page.

Source Summary: displays the summary of each power source. The detail information of the project is available on Google project hosting site under ekolugical-carbonometer.

Project Experience

It's finally a big relief after this project is done. I've been working very closely with my teammate both BJ Peter Delacruz and Wahib Hanani on this project. Each of us very devotes to this project. Personally, this is a great experience for software development. There are a few factors that matter to the completion of this project. We've used the software ICU to monitor the project progress such as the coverage of the system. However, the software ICU doesn't really reflect the amount of actual work for each member due to some administering tasks doesn't monitor by the system. Also, working collaboratively is very important for this groupwork. Though, we have assigned specific tasks to each member, we always jump in to help or shuffle the task so that each member can involve in all part of the system. Last word to say, I will miss the fun working in ekolu team.

Have a wonderful winter break!!!