OpTalk

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OpTalk

• Ted Olsen

CIS 4914 Senior Project
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Summary

• Motivation
• My own work as an operator made it apparent to me
  that communication is too difficult within CIRCA
  operations.
• Problem
• Communication is too stiff, official, and
  uncommon.
• Better knowledge and control of lab situations
  could come from better communication.
• Solution
• A chat client specifically for CIRCA Operations
  would make communication much more frequent by
  making it easy.

3
Literature Sources

• Myles, Ashish. Java TCP Sockets and Swing
  Tutorial, http//www.cise.ufl.edu/amyles/tcpchat
  /, University of Florida (as-of 15 Feb 2005).
• Horstmann, Cay and Cornell, Gary. Core JAVA 2,
  Volume 1-Fundamentals, Santa Clara, CA Sun
  Microsystems Press (2005).
• Anon. JavaTM 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 API
  Specification, http//java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/doc
  s/api/index.html, Sun Microsystems (as-of 15 Feb
  2005).

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Literature Sources (cont.)

• Marinacci, Joshua. Make Your Swing App Go
  Native, http//today.java.net/pub/a/today/2003/12
  /08/swing.html, java.net (as-of 15 Mar 2005)
• Anon. What is Jabber?, http//www.jabber.org/abo
  ut/overview.shtml, Jabber Software Foundation
  (as-of April 2005)

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Work Performed

• The server and client portions of the program
  were completed successfully. The server runs on a
  server in CSE E212 and is currently accepting
  clients.
• Software used
• Java 2 language and libraries
• http//java.sun.com
• Eclipse IDE
• http//www.eclipse.org
• SVN Version control system
• http//subversion.tigris.org

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Component Interaction
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Client GUI
Connect Window First visible window when
Client program starts up. User enters username
and password and the Client attempts to connect.
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Client GUI

• Userlist Window
• This window comes up when the user has
  successfully logged in.
• Shows all connected users.
• Chat windows are launched from here.
• Menus located at top of this window hold all
  non-chat functions

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Client GUI

• Chat Window
• When a user starts a chat with another user, this
  window appears.
• Shows history of conversation above, has room to
  type below

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Client GUI

• Admin Window
• From here, an admin or supervisor can
• add and delete users
• change passwords
• set the message of the
• day

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Information Storage

• Information is stored in flat files.
• Client and server side logs of messages and
• errors are kept.
• User names are stored with MD5 hashes of
• passwords.

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Things I learned

• Writing a prototype with a general plan and then
• writing a clean program from scratch may take
  much
• longer than making a detailed plan and writing
  it correctly
• the first time.
• I learned a lot about Java and cross-platform
  programming

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Things I'd do differently ...

• Detailed, specification level design from the
  very start.
• Make use of common design patterns
  (www.dofactory.com)
• Use better object-oriented programming practices
• Stick to a standard set of practices.

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Future Work

• I plan to maintain and improve this project for
  as long as I work with the Office of Academic
  Technology.
• To Do
• Implement features in menu that do not yet work.
• Online Manual
• Implement web interface for administration and
  to allow CIRCA operators to register to use
  service without supervisor intervention.
• Receive feedback from users and implement new
  features accordingly.