Background to the Project

This project was initally undertaken in 2003/2004 as a final year project by Pierce Gleeson. He designed the tool, as set out in the requirements, to be of help to post graduate students research. The tool has users, as set up by the admin of the site. These users can then, add, remove, edit and view entries to the site. Each entry has an associated BibTex entry also. When a user looks at an entry they feel may be of help to another userm they can set up a flag to that user, recommending the paper to them. When that user logs in next, the flag will appear, along with whatever comment was left.

Who's Who?

• Student: Suzanne Corbett 4th CSSE
• Supervisors: Tom Naughton and Andrew Page

Progress Since Last Update:

The first requirement had now been completed. The Entity-Relationship models for the old and new structures were designed prior to any implementation took place. These were approved by the supervisors of the project and then implemented. The old database consisted of 279 tables when last checked, although this number was increasing as new users and articles were added. The new design has 7 static tables. No matter how much the information in the tool grows, the number of tables in the database will not. The code has been altered for most areas of the system so that it now accesses the new database. However the code for inserting an article/paper etc was not altered at this stage, as the second requirement will result in this code being completely changed. The second requirement was then started. The aim of this requirement is to allow users to copy and paste their BibTex into one text box, and the system will then parse this and enter the correct fields into the datbase. This requirement is about two thirds completed.

Time Delay!!!

Unfortunately, due to my computer being compromised by an external hacked, my system was down from Monday morning, November 22nd until Friday morning, November 26th. The entire system had to be wiped. I have a back up of my home directory and the /etc directory of the operating system. All applications will now have to be re-installed from scratch but hopefully this will not take nearly as long as it did initially. During the time that the computer was down, I concentrated on other aspects of the project. I spend a considerable amount of time carrying out some literature review. I also made a start on the installation manual. This is not listed as a requirement until the very end, but I am hoping getting some of it completed now will allow for more development time at the end.