Weekly update 12/10/2007

The past week has been relatively quiet on the thesis front as I have been working on assignments for my other subjects.

However, I have managed to solve the problem of generating unique ids for each workflow element. From here on, any changes to code will mainly involve commenting, clean up and testing.

Also, Hendy and I have submitted our joint poster to the Reasearch Conversazione which is held on the last day of the semester.

Research Conversazione 2007

I have just submitted our entry to the Research Conversazione 2007 which is to be held on the last day of the semester. Hopefully these entries will be able to highlight how current information systems in our health industry are inadequate and show the potential of what IT has to offer in this field. Here is what our poster looks like:

Workflow Builder

Below are screen shots of the workflow builder I have been working on. Its has a relatively simple layout true to the design goals I have set. The GUI essentially allows the users to build abstract workflows, save them to a file and save them to a Workflow Management database. It also allows the users to display and retrieve these workflows.



The workflow builder is still incomplete. There are revisions that need to be undertaken; these include:

• Documentation of code - I need to find a way of generating an API (there are certain tools out there that I have yet to investigate).
• Generation of unique IDs for each workflow element -
  
• Testing, testing, testing ...

Quick Demonstration:

The screen shots below shows how user can create an abstract workflow.

The second screen shot shows the program generating the abstract workflow in XML before saving it to a file and storing a copy in the database.

Weekly Update 05/10/2007 - Thesis Consolidation

Today, Hendy and I resumed our weekly meeting with our surrogate supervisor, Alan Fekete. While Professor Jon Patrick is away, we have been in touch through email and online entries onto the TRAC.

During the meeting, I gave an update on my thesis progress. I have almost completed the foundations of the workflow builder. There are minor revisions and testing that needs to be done in order to make the workflow builder functional. I will provide the list of updates in a later entry. According to the agile process, I have completed the first four iterations and up to the fifth iteration.

Upon the outcomes of the meeting, Alan has advised us to finalise the core fundamentals of the thesis and begin the write up. This will involve revising the thesis draft (marks have yet to be released, however, our supervisors have given us feedback on them) , adding and correcting the draft and then documenting the second half of the semester. Roughly additions to the draft thesis will be:

• Documentation of the software methodology/model used
• Documentation of architecture
• Documenting the results
  
• Documenting possible extensions (future work)
• Writing up a conclusion

It will take roughly 1-2 weeks (depending on the load of my other subjects) to write up these sections.