CLI Technical Review

Hale-aloha-cli-pichu is the project for our group to review. This project supposed to develop a command line interface for the users to type in their queries to retrieve data. The data will be from WattDepot, which is an open source, RESTful web service that collects electricity data (such as current power utilization or cumulative power utilization) from meters and stores it in a database. The data can then be retrieved by other tools for visualization and analysis. It is designed to provide infrastructure for experimentation and development of "Smart Grid" applications.

The available commands for this system would be:  

current-power <tower name-lounge>, which will query the program to return the current-power for the given tower.

daily-energy <tower name-lounge>, which will query the program to return the daily energy for the given day for the given tower.

energy-since <tower name-lounge> date, which will query the program to return the energy since the date the user specifies for the given tower.

rank-towers date1 date2, which will query the program to return a list of energy consumed between the dates the users specify by the towers in ascending order.

Help, the program will provide a list of instructions guiding the users how to use the system.

Quit, the user will exit the program.  

Basically, this project implemented all the functions listed above.

  

Beside the functions listed above that the project should implement, it should also meet the three prime directives, which mean:

1. The system can accomplish a useful task; 

2. An external user can successfully install and use the system;

3. An external developer can successfully understand and enhance the system.

 

Since the project implements all the functions correctly, it pretty much meet the first prime directive. For the second prime directive, however, though I could successfully install, I could not successfully use the system once I imported it to my Elipse environment due to there was no local jar file. Also, it would be nice to provide the instructions in the program when the program starts to run, something like:

Note - towers are: Mokihana, Ilima, Lehua, Lokelani

Lounges are the tower names followed by a "-" followed by one of A, B, C, D, E. For example, Mokihana-A.

Date format would be: yy-mm-dd

please choose one of the following options:

help

current-power tower-lounge

daily-energy tower-lounge date

energy-since tower-lounge date

rank-towers date1 date2

quit

I think it will be more convenience for the users if doing in this way instead of just have the instruction on the home page and leave the blank there when the program start to run.

For the third prime directive, I believe that this project pretty much meet this requirement because there is very detail information, such as ant, eclipse, jenkin etc to help the new developers to understand the system.

This project was done under an issue-based project management because the members in the team posted new issues constantly and assign the ownership to the members so the members so they could work consistently and parallel.

Three Prime Directives to Open Source

Overview:

The package I downloaded is TripleA map and its stated objective is to allow people to implement and play various strategy board games (such as a well-known popular war game based on World War II ®).

URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripleamaps/        

1.     The system successfully accomplishes a useful task.

The system is careful and considerate of customers. Also, its design and information is efficient. It provides all the information that the users may need regardless what level they might be and what environment they would have. For example, it provides different information for different operation system’s users.  Therefore, users can easily follow the instruction and design to accomplish the task. Thus, the system actually achieve its objective.

2.     An external user can successfully install and use the system.

The system provides very clear instruction for installing and using. For example, it states that there are three steps for installation:

a.     Downloading TripleA;

b.     Unzipping TripleA;

c.      Running TripleA;

It even provides the WinZip and WinRAR information just for the case the users do not know how to unzip files. Also it specifically points out that the users must have a java virtual Machine (known as well as the JRE (java runtime engine) installed in order to play TripleA. By following the steps, I was able to install and use the system successfully.

3.     An external developer can successfully understand and enhance the system.

I can successfully understand the system since it provides a clear and organized user interface, such as Game type, File, Version. For each Game type, it also has detail information explaining their difference and use. Besides, it also provides the screen shot so the users can understand easily by the visual senses.  

Overall, I believe that the system meets all three Prime Directives.