Re: Gradebook / Introduction

[Matt Wimer <matt@cgibuilder.com>]

About my current grade book.  The code is pre-apha quality, as of
right now.  By, monday the project is due out.  So it will work 
by monday. :)

The code isn't very clean, and needs a good washing if it is going
to be used in a large scale production environment.  This is largely
due to the short production time my group and i have had on this
project.

The user interface is gnome/gnome-perl see:
http://thunder.cgibuilder.com/~matt/school/cs/360/gradebook/screenshot4.gif

The backened in mysql right now, but i am trying to keep the database
code as independant of database as possible.

For a special treat we have added a web interface for the students
to view thier grades.  

I promise this web code is buggy because i keep breaking stuff in the
database :), but it can be tested at:
http://thunder.cgibuilder.com/~cory/intro.cgi

> Bruno Vernier is working on defining the XML DTDs we'll need, so as to define
>  the data structures.  I'm pretty sure he's basing them on the work of the
> IMS Project <http://www.imsproject.org>.  Once that's done we should be able
> to develop various components that work against those structures without
> having to have that development tightly coordinated.  So long as there's a
> common data structure, end users should be able to pick and choose the
> components they'd like to use and be reasonably sure they'll work together.

I'm not exactly certain how this works in to the gradebook, but i'll take
a better look here soon.

> I've looked at Bradley's webpage, and it's clear that he's just starting.
> Justin and Matt, could you give us some idea of where you stand in the
> development of your respective gradebooks, and what kind of help we can give
> you to get them up and running?

Once, i release this thing, im sure the best thing will be users
to find errors and faults.  

i am currently looking at making this gradebook run all the grading for
a school.  The system hasn't been designed for single user mode, even tho'
it currently only works correctly for a single user.

So, an installation of this code for an entire school would actually 
tell us more about the system than anything else.

--matt wimer