[GSoC09-Devcathlon] Tentative Plans

Welcome to GSoC
Hello, GSoC!
I'm glad to announce my induction to Google's 2009 Summer of Code. This is a belated entry about my pre-dated acceptance back in April. I've yet to talk much about it, but it's never too late. This series will be targeted for people interested in the progress of Devcathlon and my personal experiences along the way. Each title in this series will be prefixed with "[GSoC09...]" as a convenient indication to you, myself and to my fellow, GSoC mentors. In this entry I'll refresh about the project Devcathlon and outline my plans for this summer.

About Devcathlon
Devcathlon is a web application to help better software engineering practices and to assist in improving project management settings. Devcathlon was a three month project started by 8 students and 1 professor from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. This project is intended to simulate a software engineering environment along with the benefits of a game. If you're looking for a place to compete with other software development teams, or to see where you stand as a developer, then Devcathlon is the place to be. The motivation behind this project was spawned from the possibility of creating a fun and easy to use game, targeted towards software developers who feel the need for a competitive edge or want to be recognized by their community of peers. Besides having to see where you rank amongst your colleagues, this application also looks to help improve the ethics and recommended practices of an ideal software development environment. Devcathlon encourages continuous development procedures that should come second nature to most developers, such as commit early and often, separate but equal ownership, and test before you drive.

Below are my summer plans and related responsibilities for this year's GSoC.
Summer outline
1. Fix any discrepancies on the Devcathlon v1.0 release.
2. Design Database schema

• Build relational model using a DBMS (MySQL, SQL Server, or the critically acclaimed Apache's Derby)
  

3. Future enhancements for Devcathlon v2.0.

• Integrate Wicket with Spring's application framework and Java-based persistent object-relational model framework, called Hibernate. Apply questions about using such a framework, like What is AOP? DAO? DI & IoC? How does applying a multi-tiered or layered application benefit from traditional coding styles in its robustness, simplicity, etc.?

So far, I've done some investigations about Apache's Derby and played around with it during my spare time. In my next posting I'll describe my experiences using Derby as a possible (embedded) persistent database for a simple Wicket application. Next week I'll attempt at designing the database schema for Devcathlon along with resolving any problems with Devcathlon v1.0. Hopefully, I'll also put out an official Devcathlon code review sometime during the course of the week.