Moving On..

Almost two months into Google Summer of Code, The knowledge I gained in developing Java Web Application is immense. I wasn't fluent with J2EE Applications before, even though I had some experience in J2SE. Thus far GSoC has been a really good learning experience.

Last week (22/07/2010) I had my second and final presentation. It went as planned apart from some minor technical glitches in the conference call. Well there was nothing much I could do about it either. Anyhow I was able to demonstrate what I did to the community and was able to get some positive feedback to improve what I have done.

I am currently working on them along with the Module Configuration related developments.



I hope to continue the developments of the Module Configuration in coming week and finish it off as soon as possible.

I hope everything goes smoothly and god will be with me as always.

Presentation II..

Ever since Google Summer of Code began. It was a quite a learning experience from all aspects. From time management to designing and coding. Looking back at the path so far, I have learnt so much that I didn't know earlier and I have been focusing myself on to achieve the goals of my project.

Last week was an eventful one where I had to finalize on a design for the Module Configuration at start up. I had a discussion with my mentor, back up mentor and some other people from the openmrs developer community and came to a design decision.
Now I have started developing it and hoping to finish it before the end of the summer.

Apart from that I completed my mid term evaluation survey and I got to know that I have successfully completed up to mid term. Which is a motivation factor for the rest of the summer. I am hoping to carry out the work I have been doing so far till the end.

Presentation II is due this week and hoping to do a presentation on the goals and a small demonstration.

Hope everything goes smoothly and hope god be with me as always.

Evaluation I

Last week was an eventful one where I started searching for ideas on how to build the Module Configuration mechanism at start up. I got some valuable feedback from the community as well as from my mentor.

Now I need to do some studying and come up with a design which will be accepted by my mentor. My mentor provided me with some great resources of similar work and I am currently going through them.

Apart from that I had to develop a mechanism which would automatically check for Module updates and prompt whenever there are module updates available, right in the Administration Page.



This week being the Mid Term Evaluation period, I am hoping to complete my evaluation as soon as possible and continue on with my project work. Hoping to come up with a good design for Module Configuration mechanism.

Hope god will be with me as always

Learning More..

Last week was quite an eventful one where I had to integrate and test the module repository caching with the online module repository (http://modules.openmrs.org/). The caching mechanism works as expected but may require some fine tuning.

Decided to work on those fine tuning after having a discussion with my mentor. Along with those fine tuning I would have to start designing a proper way to configure modules right after they have been deployed on to the Openmrs system. Need to discuss about possible designs of that with the community.

Mid Term evaluation just a week away, enjoyed the experience I acquired all throughout since the beginning of this summer. Gained a lot of valuable insight of how Open source projects are performing and how they collaborate to solve problems.

Hoping to learn more and contribute more. May god be with me as always.

A month of Work, Fun and Excitement

It is more than one month since Google Summer of Code coding officially kicked off on 24th of May 2010. Turning back I can see all the oppurtunities I faced to learn and the challenges I had to face and how I accomplished them of course with the great help of my mentor. It was a great month.

Recapping on last week where I managed to get the Module Repository caching done and started testing with a locally hosted module repository.

Before the Module Repository caching for each Key Stroke on the Module Repository search box an ajax call is sent to remote server. This call is sent via the internet. In sites where internet is slow this could take time to search modules.



With the initial module repository caching at the startup of all the modules in the repository. I have changed the ajax call to call a servlet which resides in the local host. Thus the requests sent over the internet is decreased. Which leads to faster module search.

I am yet to fully test this with the actual system. Once I do it I can do a performance test.

Hoping to do those within this week. Hope god will be with me as always.

Four Weeks..

It has been 4 weeks since Google Summer of Code officially kicked off and it was quite a learning experience thus far. Learnt a lot about open source and how they collaborate to get the work done.

Last week was an eventful week where I started developing the module repository caching mechanism. And to add icing on the cake last Saturday (19th of June 2010) I received the Google Welcome Package. It was a quite a gift to receive after a much awaited 3 weeks.

Mid Term evaluation begins on July 12th 2010 in exactly 3 weeks. Hoping to completely finish module repository caching and searching before that.

Hope god will be with me as always.

Presentation I..

Last week was an eventful week with the OpenMRS Interns Presentation on 10/06/2010.
I wanted to do a Presentation of the problem statement which can be understood by anyone, and which describes what I have done so far and what I am hoping to do in the future.

I thought to create a Presentation which is informal but clearly states the above mentioned.

The Presentation can be found at

http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AdL9ONCpLAwGZGdrc3hoYmRfNTJoZjh2eHZjcQ&hl=en

I got to do my Presentation via a Skype Conference Call where I had to speak and explain each slide. Unfortunately the screen share system didn't work for Sri Lanka on that day due to some bandwidth problems, so my mentor (Burke Mamlin) had to flip through the slide while I was explaining orally. Thank you Burke for that :). It seems many have enjoyed the slides and my mentor said that my presentation was easy to follow.

I couldn't do the demonstration of the things I have done, sadly :( but I was determined to show it at least to my mentor. So I managed to take some time out my mentor's busy schedule and did a screen sharing via Skype on Saturday around 10.00 P.M. UTC-4. He gave me some feedback which included pros and cons of my work so far.

He pointed out somethings which he said are of low priority that can be done to improve the things I have done. I took notes about them and hoping to get to them at the end of the summer.

Currently I am planning and designing to do the Speeding up of module repository search which would also be another challenging task.

Hope everything goes smoothly and may god be with me as always.