Stevenjohnstonac4's Blog

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 30 November

stevenjohnstonac4 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:24:26 +0000

This week was spent preparing the final deliverable for this semester. A second report and a prototype are part of the second deliverable which will be examined during study week. In my meeting with my supervisor he gave me an outline of what i should submit.

The tasks I carried out this week were:

1) Draw up E-R Diagram for the database that I will use.

2) Draw up some example interfaces for the web appplication.

3) Create powerpoint presentation for examination.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 23rd November

stevenjohnstonac4 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:16:14 +0000

The last two weeks were very busy with projects and exams in other subjects so had not got much time to work on the project. It was now time to program the prototype which was due with the second deliverable for this semester. I had decided to use Java in conjunction with JNI to build the prototype. it soon became clear that this was probably not the most suitable programming language to build this system, C# was the way to go. However I was relunctant at first to change to C# as I had never used this programming language before. the reason C#is more suitable for this is the fact that it contains the libraries REGISTRY and REGISTRYKEY which can access the Windows registry. More research will have to put in so thatI can get to grips with programming in this language.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 26th October

stevenjohnstonac4 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:36:01 +0000

This week was spent preparing the first deliverable for our final year project. The first deliverable was a report featuring a technical feasibility study of the technolgies I intend to develop my system with. It had to show that these technologies could work together.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 19th October

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:33:29 +0000

On the advice of my supervisor I went see Frank Walsh regarding what approach should take in developing my system. He suggested that I used Java Native Interface and Windows API to develop my system.

We went through thae way the system should work. When the user logs on to a computer an agent should be pushed down the network and installed on the client. Something like group policy could you used for this. This agent will then scan the client for hardware and software details. A timer class should be used to time when the agent scans the client. If the agent fails to scan an SMS message should be generated and sent to the Network Administrator.

The data gathered by the agent should then be stored in a database located on the network server. The network administrator can access this via a web application. This application will allow he/she to generate reports and check data about the network.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 12th Oct

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:04:42 +0000

In my meeting with my supervisor this week we discussed which approach to use for the development lifecycle. It was a choice between a Waterfall approach where all the design and analysis is done at the start of the lifecycle and the coding and testing are done end of the lifecycle or an iterative approach where the project is broken into different iterations. Each iteration has analysis, design, coding and testing. The iterative approach is my preferred choice as I dont want to get to March and find out that the project cant be done.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 5th Oct

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:38:20 +0000

This week was spent researching current network inventory software on the market. I compared the functionality of these applications with the system that I propose to develop.The purpose of this was to see what features could be added to my system that current applications did not include. The three inventory applications I looked at where:

1) E-Z Audit.

2)Total Network Inventory.

3)Network Asset Tracker Pro.

Each of them were downloaded and used on my laptop to see what information they gathered. None of these had the SMS feature that I intend to integrate into my project. Another feature of these systems was that they could only be accessed on the machine on which they were installed.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning 28th Sept

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:10:39 +0000

Had my first meeting with my supervisor this week. I described to him what I want my project to do and how the idea came about to do a network inventory system. He asked me to type up an enhanced version of my proposal so that he could give it to computer services and see what advice they could give.

He suggested topics that I needed to research in regards to the project. Topics included:

1) Whether an agent needed to be installed on the client machines or not.

2) What technologies I need to use.

Final Year Project: Week Beginning Sept 23rd

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:28:04 +0000

Got an email from Frank Walsh telling me who my project supervisor was going to be. Now i need to email my supervisor to organise a time to meet to discuss my project.

Final Year Project Week 1

stevenjohnstonac4 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:09:02 +0000

This week I had to decide what my final year project was going to be. A project proposal had to written up and given to the project co-ordinator Frank Walsh. My proposal is to create a network inventory system that checks PC’s to see what hardware and software are installed on them and stored this information in a database which can be accessed via a web application.

Once the co-ordinator recieved the proposal it had to decided whether the proposal was suitable for a final year project. A supervisor and second reader needed to be selected for each student. Once this was decided we could get working on the project.

Hello Steven

stevenjohnstonac4 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:02:15 +0000

Hi Steven,

Dan Here to give you a quick introduction into the wonderful word of wordpress. First Thing that you will need to do will be to change your password and to do this you need to be able to log into the backend of the website. To do this please click the link for site admin on the right hand side of the page and enter in the details that were emailed to you to allow you to log in. Then proceed down the left hand side of your dashboard to the users tab and make the amendments there.

Posting on wordpress is very easy and all you have to do is login to the back end dashboard click the posts tab and add a new post. Choose a title, upload images if you need to and then click update/publish on the right hand side of the page. Simple as pie!

If at any time you want to visit your website to examine the changes you have been making then all you have to do is scroll to the top of the dashboard page and click the visit site link beside the name of your website. Simple as. Alternatively you can just paste in the URL of your website.

Hope that helps

Daniel Jordan