Objects represent and model real-world entities the state of an object consists of the pieces of data that conceptually define what that object is.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS

Project Phase I Data Representation & EDI

1  Introduction

Objects represent and model real-world entities. The state of an object consists of the pieces of data that conceptually define what that object is. Often it is necessary to be able to transmit objects between different systems, which may use completely different languages and technologies. The transfer of such data is known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and is achieved by translating objects into a platform-independent data format such as XML (Extensible Markup Language) or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) representations. Once transferred, the data on the other end can then be translated into an object in the second system. Different languages and frameworks have their own terminology for this process (marshaling/unmarshaling, serialization/deserialization, etc.).

The first phase of the project will focus on the design and implementation of several Java classes to model the various entities in the system. For the first phase, your classes may be simple data containers. Full behavior, methods, and the inheritance will be required in Phase II and you are encouraged to plan ahead for any modifications that you may need. Your classes will define, conceptually, what each of the entities are (their data and types and accessor/mutator methods) as well as provide means for creating and building instances of those entities.

You will also write a parser to process a collection of “flat” data files containing data on entities in the old system and build instances of each object. These files were dumped from the old system and are in a non-standard semi-colon and comma-separated value format.

Finally, you will also implement functionality to serialize your objects into a data interchange format. Specifically, you will serialize them to XML and/or JSON formats

2 Data Files

 The data dumped from the old system is separated into several files. A full example of well-formatted input and acceptable output has been provided. However, you will also be required to develop your own non-trivial test case. In general, you may assume that all data is valid and properly formatted and all data files are named as specified. You should assume that all data files are located in a directory called data and output files should be saved to the same directory.

2.1 Persons Data File

 Data pertaining to each person on the system is stored in a data file in data/Persons.dat . The format is as follows: the first line will contain a single integer indicating the total number of records. Each subsequent line contains semicolon delimited data fields:

• Person Code – the unique alpha-numeric designation from the old system

• Name – the person’s name in lastName,firstName format

Address – the mailing address of the person. The format is as follows:

 STREET,CITY,STATE,ZIP,COUNTRY

Email Address(es) – an (optional) list of email addresses; if there are multiple email addresses, they will be delimited by a comma

2.2  Customer Data File

 Data pertaining to each asset on the system is stored in a data file in data/Customers.dat . The format is as follows: the first line will contain a single integer indicating the total number of records. Each subsequent line contains semicolon-delimited data fields:

• Customer Code – a unique alpha-numeric designation from the old system

Type – a single character indicating if the customer is a government ( G ) or Corporate ( C ) customer

Primary contact – a person code corresponding to the individual who serves as the customer’s primary contact

• Name – the name of the customer

Address – the mailing address of the customer. The format is as follows:

 STREET,CITY,STATE,ZIP,COUNTRY

2.3  Product Data File

 Data pertaining to each product on the system is stored in a data file in data/Products.dat . The format is as follows: the first line will contain the total number of records (an integer). Each subsequent line contains semicolon delimited data fields depending on the type of product.

• Equipment have the following format: code;E;name;pricePerUnit

• Licenses have the following format: code;L;name;serviceFee;annualLicenseFee

• Consultations have the following format: code;C;name;consultantPersonCode;hourlyFee

Note that for consultations, the person code is a reference to a particular person in the

 Persons.dat file

3  Requirements

 You are required to design Java classes to model the entities above and hold the appropriate data. The classes you design and implement, their names, and how they relate to each other are design decisions that you must make. However, you should follow good object-oriented programming principles. In particular, you should make sure that your classes are designed following best practices.

In addition, your program will load data from the data files, construct (and relate) instances of your objects, and produce the appropriate output files.

It is your choice as to which format you produce, XML or JSON. For XML, your output file names should Persons.xml , Customers.xml and Products.xml; and for JSON, your output files should be Persons.json , Customers.json and Products.json respectively. Your output files should be placed in the same data directory as the input files.

There is no need to define a rigorous schema in either case. However, your XML/JSON should be well formatted and valid (in particular, you may need to escape certain characters). You should follow the general structures in the examples provided, though some flexibility is allowed for tag and element names. However, the output should conceptually match the expected output. It must also pass any and all validation tests (using the validators listed below). In addition, you may (in fact are encouraged to) use a library to convert your Java classes to XML and/or JSON if you wish. Some common libraries and more information on each of the formats can be found with the following resources:

• W3C’s XML Tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp

• An XML Validator: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp

• JAXB, a standard Java-XML binding framework: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/ articles/javase/index-140168.html

• JSON Introduction: http://json.org/

• A JSON Validator: http://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/

 

4  Process

 For this initial phase, your objects may be simple data containers since the only thing you are doing with them is parsing data files, creating object instances, and exporting them in a different format. However, much of the code you  write in this phase will be useful in subsequent phases, so ensure that you have well-designed, robust, bug-free and reusable code.

4.1   Testing

 

You are expected to thoroughly test and debug your implementation using your own test case(s). To ensure that you do, you are required to design and turn in at least one non-trivial test case to demonstrate your program was tested locally to some degree. Ultimately your application will be tested on multiple test cases through webgrader.

Understand that the web grader is not a sufficient testing tool. Webgrader is a “black-box” tester: you don’t have access to its internals, to the test cases, nor can you debug with respect to it.

Also understand what a test case is: it is an input-output that is known to be good using a method independent of your program (calculated or verified by hand). We will use your test case when grading other assignments, so you are encouraged to be adversarial: design test cases to probe and break “bad” code, but stay within the requirements specified above.

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