A title and an index

Although it's said the title and the introduction are the last things you should write, it's also true that it's a good idea to have a work title and index, or introduction, so here they are:

End-user collaboration in agile database design
A bibliographic review

The work should contain next points:

• Rapid Agile Application Development
• State of the art
• Database aspects
• Who's who
• End user importance
• End user
• Importance of end user in design
• Collaboration of end users
• Collaboration and databases
• Refactoring
• Evolutive design
• Refactoring databases
• ETL Tools
• CVS
• CVS for databases
• Real-time (work-time) refactoring
• Tools
• Database design
• Principles
• End users

Technical aspects

• Persistence
• HIBERNATE
• Other persistence tools
• Respect to relational design
• Refactoring code <--> refactoring database
• Dynamic forms generation
• State of the art
• Model driven UI
• ¿Models? UI
• ¿xForms?
• Assuring usability and accesibility

ETL tools

I have joined an agile database mail list, and I have started learning (10 points).

ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load, that are processes to be carried on when:

• adding data to a warehouse
• exchanging data between databases
• integration of legacy systems

Some open source tools are

• Kettle
• Scriptelle Open Source ETL Toll
• Talend Open Studio

These tools can be quite interesting to me work for its capacity in SQL scripting and connect databases. I mean, although this tool are planned to connect different databases, it could be use to connect a database in time1, with this database in time2.

About dynamic forms generation

She looked so pretty ... but married was years ago[1]

Don Giovanni

In my last report I told this topic appeared in my last meeting with HCI-RG's boss Dr. Martin. I had thought that was a complementary field in my study, but we both agreed in have a fast glance about the state of the art on that matter.

There's several works about it, and some of them are:

• JAXTOOL, it's a commercial tool based upon XML, and XSLT that transform a User Interface (UI) Model into an application. The objective could be Java, XHTML-Javascript or simple PDF. The User Interface Model use XUI as definition language.
• XUI, it's a open-source framework for Model-Driven User Interface (MDUI). It helps sepparate UI definition of its development. Although it's open-source, it seems to be developed by JAXTOOL's people.
• Some others works as Helm and Thompson 2001, [PDF] An approach for totally dynamic forms processing in Web-based applications.

As fast conclussion, it seems there's quite done on the matter, but it still seems an important stuff if we are thinking about rapid database design in work-time.

And just throw a question, Should [es]xForms play anything here? I'll answer ASAP.

[1] That's an example of fake cite. Don't do that at home.

Usability breakfast

Yesterday (march 25th 2008) I had a very interesting breakfast with Dr. Martin González, director of my PhD research.
As usual we talked about history, from Manila's galleon to Canary Islands first settlers, and soon we dived into our main theme.

We touched several interesting points, including some graduation works for Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering, and some new branches to explore in my work about the state of the art.

Some of this points were:

• dynamic form generation, and
• including semantic ontologies to database design (and relating it to web 2.0)

Another step forward.

P.S. It's seems I'll have to improve my English.

Patria

¿Alguien en la sala recuerda a Sándor Puhl? ¿Qué sensación viene a vuestros estómagos?

¿Y si me atrevo a citar a Lewis Hamilton? Seguro que más de uno es capaz de relacionar ambas sensaciones.

He aquí el listado de los premios Turing.

Ninguno de los premiados es español. Además de norteaméricanos y británicos, hay en la lista nacionales de Noruega, Israel, Holanda, Venezuela, Grecia, y Suiza, entre otros. Todos estos países notablemente menos poblados que el nuestro.

¿Acaso no trabajamos tanto los españoles como ellos? ¿O no?

Es cierto que buscar los premios, como anunció Sócrates sólo lleva a la frustración; pero si has pensado, siquiera un momento, que te gustaría ver tu país en esta, o cualquier otra lista similar , recuerda que sólo hay un camino.

Practicones y científicos

Hace ya muchos años que Ramón y Cajal distinguía entre los profesionales de la medicina a los practicones (a los que incluso califica de vulgares) y los científicos, empujados en el afán de desvelar los secretos de la Naturaleza.
Los primeros, en apariencia, gozan de una vida más cómoda y holgada, disponen de generosos salarios por su ejercicio, y acomodan con relativa facilidad su vida familiar y social con el mismo.

La vida de los segundos gira exclusivamente en torno a la Ciencia, pues de otro modo están abocados al fracaso. Sin embargo su satisfacción suele ser altísima cuando logran arrancar el más sútil secreto, y obtienen el reconocimiento de su comunidad.

Esta clasificación es, a mi juicio, totalmente aplicable al mundo de la informática. Ahí queda eso, y cada quién piense dónde quiere estar y los motivos que le llevan a ello.

Aquéllos que haya sentido la menor necesidad de formar parte del segundo grupo, no duden en echar un vistazo al siguiente libro.

Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica. Los
tónicos de la voluntad. Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

You are here

Science research is like land discovering, you want to go somewhere and you've got no idea how to get there. Even you could also unknown where you're getting.
In other sense, researching is joining science branches of the human knowledge amoeba, and because of that, researcher has to command these branches so close to his (or her) investigation domain.
To know where we are, and where we want to go we should use a map, a here it is.

Any comment welcome. Made with Inkscape.

START

Welcome to this blog.
Here you will find unnecesary information about my PhD research in Computer Science.

Main theme will be Collaborative database design, and it will be developed with the support of Dr. Martin's Human Computer Interaction Research Group (www.hci-rg.com) at the Universidad de Oviedo (www.uniovi.es)

At this time I'm polishing burocractic and academic issues, and planning the development of an introduction about the state of the art.
Main tools now are scientific libraries, Internet and my little field notebook (paper-made) I always carry on.

Next time, I hope publish the work plan for the Introduction work.