The project I was working on this semester was the Generic Database Explorer project. This project involves the automatic generation and representation of the most common values in any database that is loaded. In other words, someone could look through any data set and only be presented data that really matters from the data set, without having to sift through the entire database.
My job this semester was to come in as an outsider to the project and test the existing build for bugs and anything else that I thought did not seem right. I have experience with SQL and PHP, so I knew what kind of things are going on it the background as I went about testing.
I loaded a data set I had with the help of Todd Deshane. My data set is for a restaurant supplier, so it gave a unique view to the project. With the data loaded, I went about browsing the schema to see how everything worked. After I determined how things worked and I learned my way around the interface, I tried to test specific things and attempted to utilize the baby database generator, but problems arose which prevented me from doing so. My findings can be found in the notes .
Things I have learned:
The work I have done has introduced me to the Generic Database Explorer project. I have learned how the build is supposed to work, and the general ideas behind the project as a whole. I learned the motivation behind the project and the work that has been done on it thus far.
I believe that I have had a positive impact on the project. Coming in as an outsider, I was able to provide a different perspective on the project and was able to explore the interface without knowledge of how it’s supposed to work or what a user “supposed” to do. Pointing out aspects of the interface that are unintuitive really helps everyone see how an outsider will view the project when being presented with it for the first time. My documentation of the errors and parts that need to be tweaked will help people working on the project to focus on aspects of it that are not working correctly.
Goals for the future:
I hope to become a larger contributor to the project throughout the upcoming year. I plan to support the project and to help fix some of the problems that I have come across. I can supply support in PHP, and I hope to become more familiar with developing SQL databases in the future. I am really excited about the prospect of having a deliverable open source project with my name associated with it. I hope to help the GDE project reach its vast potential.
Josh Newell 2006