Blogonaut

Blog O' Rama: Re: wizdumb: Server Down

Link: Blog O' Rama: Re: wizdumb: Server Down.

Hopefully the server will function again soon...

Server appears up again to me.  Are there still issues?

 

Smiling_Chen: The last class...

Link: Smiling_Chen: The last class....

A question for Professor Bud, during the presentations, you said we don't need to worry about HTML any more right?  Since some of the group's interfaces are nicer and more complicated than others.  Will you grade or give extra credit based on that?

My response to this is as follows.  Simple interfaces are fine.  If I was going to make refinements, I would make sure that xml does not pop through after you submit a form or something, i.e., do the thank-you page thing.  Scott Foley has submitted a nice post on how to do the thank-you page, a blogosphere classic.

Mandurro: Comments on the Blogging Experience this year - lots to say so bear with me

Link: Mandurro: Comments on the Blogging Experience this year - lots to say so bear with me.

BUT, there was ONE major drawback in my opinion and my experience: the relationship between blogging and the class grade.  My experience was that while I like blogging about many things that were relevant to the class, I'm just not the kind of person who will blog about a question about class material and such

Well, I recognize that there are many different ways people may feel comfortable participating, so I tried to open it up fairly liberally.  Many did focus on questons, but people also talked about information business and other topics.  I probably did emphasize questions quite a bit during projects.

As for the amount given in class for participation, well the people who made those posts spent time on it and should get credit, per the contract I laid out at the beginning of class.  There is still time to catch up until December 20.

thecrew: question on project again

Link: thecrew: question on project again.

Nick and I have been working on the project again. We have got the dropdown to work, so now the forms look fabulous. However, we are not able to input the data correctly into our database by using our online forms. This is the error msg we receive:

I think Blog O'Rama mentions a good possibility.  Here's another take on what may be happening.  You have slightly different names for the html parameters and the bind variables.  Is capitalization excactly the same?  Is spelling perfectly correct?  Are you absolutely certain that you have an element in your html form named for the bind variable?

thecrew: dropdown

Link: thecrew: dropdown.

We have successfully created the drop down and linked it to the rowset-element. However, on the web, the donor id is not showing up as we expected it to.

M Go Blue's response to this seems good.

 

Hail to the Victors: Oracle Question

Link: Hail to the Victors: Oracle Question.

Does anyone know if there is a master reset for our Oracle spaces to completely claer out EVERYTHING that we added in?  The drop tables command doesn't seem to be cutting it and our database hates us.

This is actually kind of a Project Issue even though you posted it under class issues.  I think Tom's comment below is good.  He should have done it as a trackback.  But at any rate, you need to drop the tables in sequence so that you are not bedeviled by the foreign key constraints.  The algorithm is: 

1. Drop tables that have foreign keys embedded in them but do not themselves embed foreign keys in other tables first.
2. As you eliminate tables, move up to the next level of tables.  These will now no longer embed foreign keys in other tables.
3. Repeat until no tables remain.

Connoisseur: Learning Question

Link: Connoisseur: Learning Question.

So, for material as dynamic and technical as this, does one learn through taking classes like this, work training, or just keeping abreast through personal research and reading?

Basically, stay abreast of the material on the Internet and find tutorials.  Once you pick up the basics through a course like BIT320, you could stay abreast of new developments yourself.  You can take classes, but those generally cost.  May and may not be worth the price to you.

RissRoss: Chatper 6 Questions

Link: RissRoss: Chatper 6 Questions.

Page 100: I think that the template first applied is for coffee, because the match template to coffee is the most specified (more specified than match = "@*|node ()."  I also think that this template is applied to coffee and the new online element, but not the children of coffee because the template for them is overridden by the other template specified.  However, in terms of question 3 for page 100, I am not sure of the answer.  Any thoughts?

Well, you have three choices:  (1) The default template which matches when nothing eles does; (2) The coffee template which only matches coffee elements; or (3) The identity template (template 2 in the example) which matches anything.

Page 108: I think that the template that matches regions avoids matching attributes by elimianting the @ symbol in the match equation. However, I am unsure as to what the * symbol refers to.

* means any element.

Page 113: Unsure of the answer to this question-- any thoughts?

Well, this element moves the current node to region
<coffees region="{region/@name}">
After that when <xsl:apply-templates/> is called, it starts at region and selects only coffee elements.

Page 116: These empty template rules suppress the copying of the source elements they match to the output because matching an empty template rule tells the processor to grab a node set and do nothing with it. According to Wagner, "an empty template rule is one that has a match pattern defined but no accompanying template."  If these templates were not present in the stylesheet then I think that the coffee applied template would be apply to them.  Is that correct?

Well, no.  The default template would be applied because there is no matching template in the stylesheet.

Hail to the Victors: Don’t read XSLT before putting up the Christmas tree...

Link: Hail to the Victors: Don’t read XSLT before putting up the Christmas tree....

Always wonderful to get such detailed posts from Hail to the Victors.  Hey, let's just shorten her name to Hail. That way if we see her in the hall we can just run after her shouting "Hail Hail" and fulfill two purposes:  (1) Getting Krysta's attention; (2) Showing appropriate school spirit before the Rose Bowl.  Now, on to a serious treatment of the usual high quality questions:

1) My first question is probably very basic, but nevertheless I continue to struggle with grasping the notion. Repeatedly, the book refers to the current node, but, I am confused as to what determines it? Is it just whatever element that you’re telling the template to match on? It also seems that there is a second current node when dealing with XPath expressions. On page 74, the book comments “the current node of these select patterns is not the same as the current node of the template rule’s match pattern.” Is the main idea that the current node, in whatever context it is being used, is just a starting point for the processor to begin reading the tree?

Using relative location steps, this interpretation is indeed the correct one.

2) My second question has to do with XPath. I understand that the general formula for a location step is axis::nodetest[predicate]. Is it a correct assumption to make that you must understand what the entire tree looks like in order to know what axis to list in the formula? Or, should I be thinking of this in terms of the axis relative to the current node, in which case the only thing I would need to know is the relationship of the selected nodes relative to the current node?

Actually, both.  If you are using absolute location steps, you need to know the whole tree.  With relative ones, only the tree that occurs underneath the current node.

3) Thirdly, as I was reading the section about template rules, I started wondering what purpose the xsl:copy template serves in real life. I understand that its primary function is to carry over the element tags, but what practical use does this ever serve in a business sense? Can someone supply me with an example when you would not want the content information and just the tags?

Sometimes you just want the element and will do something else with the contents, like convert it to an attribute.

jrtrana: All together

Link: jrtrana: All together.

What I don't understand is WHY the whole process of converting SQL to HTML has to take place. It seems to me like things are far more complicated than they need to be. The process of converting SQL to XSQL then to XML then using XSLT ... and on and on until we finally get HTML seems too tedious. Why isn't there some sort of software than can basically just do it all automatically?

My question to this is "Which aspect would the software automate?"  We have software automating the conversion of a row set to XML.  We have software mapping the XML in HTML.  We do have to use XSLT to specify the mapping, and I agree, that is not real easy.

You might respond, "Well, I want a software where I can visually take database elements and just place them on a page?"  My counter, "Welcome to the world of proprietary solutions where I've just made you a customer of vendor X for life because you understand nothing of the principles involved."   In part, what you are getting from this experience is an appreciation of the complexity involved in creating any database system, and ultimately how inflexibility can arise.

I would be failing my duty if I gave you the easy way out and just hand-waved about the rest.  It would make things easy in the short-term, but you would understand nothing of XML and the real possibilities of XML-based solutions.  To see immediate benefit, just look at this post by Frank where he discusses his plans to rework his IM history has just learned uses an XML-based format.  Frank may and may not succeed in his endeavor, but he is now able to perceive a potential business opportunity (albeit kind of puny), and knows what it would take to do it.  How does he know this, well he knows that XSLT is what is under the hood in XML conversions and he knows how that works.

You are sweating right now to gain understanding that will make you see more clearly in the long run.