Creation of Webdav

Creation of WebDAV

Creation of WebDav using GanttProject in order to enhance CET Students

Final Manuscript

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for Senior Projects in Software Engineering Technology

July 26, 2004

Kalvin Dixon

SET 401: Section H001

Summer 2004

Instructor: Steven Blesse

Internship Advisors: Tulio Sulbaran

William Crosby

Creation of WebDAV

Table of Contents

1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………2

2. ICEE Overview ……………………………………………………………..3

3. Work Environment (Internship Activities) ……………………………… 4-5

4. Technology Summary …………………………………………………… 6-7

5. Sample Work ……………………………………………………………. 8-9

6. Professional Advancement …………………………………………………10

7. Work Based Learning ………………………………………………………11

8. Lessons Learned …………………………………………………………….12

9. Appendix ……………………………………………………………………13

Appendix

Internship Advisor Contract
Internship Advisor Acceptance E-mail
Resume
Certification of Authorship
Interim Memorandum
Company Details
Technology Details
Samples of Works

Creation of WebDAV

Introduction

Hello, my name is Kalvin Dixon. I am 22 year old ambitious young man from a small town in the mighty state of Mississippi called Crawford. Crawford is located in North Mississippi nearColumbus and Starkville. I graduated from NoxubeeCountyHigh School in May of 2000. I graduated number 8 out of 121 in my high school class. My quest started here at the University of Southern Mississippi in August of 2000. I am currently a senior Software Engineering Technology major with an emphasis in Local Area Networking. While at USM, I ran for the title of Mr. USM and came in first place. That was a big step in my life to run for such a position. I was aMississippi Alliance for Minority Participate Scholar (MAMP) in the spring of 2004 and I’m also a member of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).

My career goals are to graduate from the University of Southern Mississippi in August of 2004 and immediately head straight to Charlotte, North Carolina to see what kind of jobs are available around that area. In about a year, if I haven’t found any type of work, I plan to go back to school and obtain a Master in Business Administration or Financing. One day, my ultimate dream is to work for Raytheon and I’m wishing and praying that one day my dream will come true.

Creation of WebDAV

ICEE Overview

The Innovation for Construction and Engineering Enhancement better known as ICEE is a center derived of undergraduate and graduate students researching project in order to enhance their abilities in today’s society. The director of the center is Dr. Tulio Sulbaran. The associate director is Professor William Crosby. The associate investigators are Professor David Marchman and Professor Doris Kemp. [1]ICEE is a multidisciplinary research center organized to enhance the economic development and educational opportunities for its participants. Graduate students are required to complete projects, where as the undergraduate {interns) are either required to work with one of the graduate students on their project or to complete a project of their own.

The Innovation for Construction & Engineering Enhancement center benefits students in many ways. The center provides undergraduate and graduate students resources for project opportunities, peer mentoring, access to space, hardware, and software resources, increase interaction with faculty, and provides support to participate in weekly conferences. ICEE can also benefit the faculty as well. The faculty has access to a pool of resources, interaction with faculty and students of multiple disciplines, a chance to build upon ICEE track record to increase opportunities for funded research proposals, collaborate on multidisciplinary project, and opportunities to place students in a structured research/project environment to enhance their educational experience. [1] ICEE mission is to develop, implement, and assess the latest educational technology and to enhance the economic development of industry through the use of the last technologies and management tools. [1] The center vision is forICEE to grow as a multidisciplinary synergistic organization uniting university and industry expertise and talent to support educational, research and economic development advancements.

Creation of WebDAV

Work Environment (Internship Activities)

My activities within Innovation for Construction & Engineering Enhancement Center includes the creation of WebDAV using GanttProject for the Construction Engineering Technology usage, designing ICEE current website, attending weekly meetings with faculty and current students in the center, doing many odd jobs around the center and communication amongst the student with the ICEE center.

Creation of WebDAV

My main project within ICEE was to create WebDAV (World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) on the webserver in order for XML files to save to the server. In order for XML files to save to the web server, you had to use GanttProject 1.9.10. With this installed, Construction Engineering Technology students could be able to save their work to the web server as an XML file using the ganttproject. Then the students can start a new project and if they need to open the other project they saved previously, they could go to the ganttproject to open from the server and compare their work with each other.

Designing ICEE current website

This was a project that I decided to take on during one of our weekly meetings. Dr. Tulio, Professor Kemp, and Professor Crosby decided that the information on the website needed to be updated and thought it would appropriate for one of the interns to take on this challenge. I wanted to learn more about HTML, so I decided to take on this challenge. On the website, I placed intern pictures, title of their projects, their personal information, project objective, project results, and project links on their site. All this information was stored in ICEE’s current web server.

Weekly Meeting

Every Tuesday, undergraduate and graduate students had prepared a power point presentation about their accomplishments for the current week and for the previous week as well. Faculty would come in to view the presentation and to see how well the graduate and undergraduate students were progressing over the weeks. Dr. Tulio, Professor Crosby, or Professor Kemp would give the students feedback on what changes or improvements they needed to make within their presentation or in their project.

Communication

Everyone within ICEE was very friendly and didn’t mind helping out someone who was in the need of some assistance. There were many graduate students within the center that would go the extra mile to find the answers to any question or concerns we (interns) had dealing with our project. Dr. Tulio tries to center the interns’ projects to something similar to what the graduate students are doing in their own projects. That way, if we have any question, we could just ask them how to do it. Dr. Tulio, Professor Crosby, and Professor Kemp were available to help the students with any question pertaining to their projects or if they needed any advice about any in particular like career choices and what you are planning to do after graduation.

Internship Requirements

The intern requirements are to develop an understanding of the industry, to gain experience in planning, developing and implementing a project. Other requirements are to become knowledgeable of the components and process in the industry and to demonstrate verbal and written communication proficiency to advance in technical and/or managerial positions. Interns are expected to be at the ICEE lab (TEC 231) for a minimum of 300 hours. The minimal 300 hours shall also comply with the internship agreement. Interns are responsible for tracking the time and demonstrating completion of each task to the instructor and to ICEE director/associate director. The tasks are listed as the following:

Task #0: Internship Agreement - Before beginning internship

Task #1: Job Opportunities & skills matrix - Before 10 hrs of work

Task #2: Resume, personal strengths and - Before 20 hrs of work Weakness and applications to jobs

Task #3: Analyze ICEE structure, resources - Before 30 hrs of work

Strengths and areas for improvement

Task #4: Prepare a project plan (s) with phase - Before 50 hrs of work

Of approx. 60hrs each phase (2-4 pg)

Task #5: Develop project based on plan and - Before 110 hrs of work

Report phase 1

Task #6: Develop project based on plan and - Before 170 hrs of work

Report phase 2

Task #7: Develop project based on plan and - Before 230 hrs of work

Report phase 3

Task #8: Prepare report of future - Before 270 hrs of work

Improvements

Task #9: Prepare final internship and - Before 295 hrs of work

Presentation

Task #10: Discuss with ICEE director and - Before 300 hrs of work

Associate director internship

Experience and evaluation

Creation of WebDAV

Technology Summary

The equipment used for the server will have no cost because I used the server located in the ICEE center in order to complete my work. I installed the GanttProject, Java, WebDav, and FrontPage installed on the server. GanttProject and Java are both free software you can retrieve from the Internet. The server will be responsible for saving Construction Engineering Technology students work after they have used the GanttProject. Then the students could be able to come back to any computer with GanttProject installed on it and open their XML files that they saved previously from the server. There were many technologies encountered while I was doing my internship with the Innovation for Construction & EngineeringEnhancementCenter. A description of my hardware and software components will give a better view of what I gain in the internship.

Hardware

Basically, there was not much hardware I dealt with other the computer and server I worked on everyday. Some days I built a few computers by placing hard drives back into them in order to make more computers for other incoming interns or graduate students.

Software

There were many software components used while I was doing internship with ICEE. Within my project, I had to use this software called the GanttProject 1.9.10. The reason why I had to learn and use this software was because Dr. Tulio wanted me to install asoftware that would enable Construction Engineering Students to submit their work to ICEE currentweb server. [2]GanttProject is a project management tool based on Gantt chart. It is built in Java and contains many features like editing projects and tasks, exporting files to HTML and PDF and can perform a remote work via WebDav.

[3] Ganttproject does the following:

Reformat the dialog box to choose date.
Print date on PDF export front page.
Add a red line on today (option can be disable on dialog box).
Down the start and end date of project, now it not inside the percent complete of the task.
Percent complete of a parent task is re-compute in function of its child.
Bug correction: "unable to quit task name editing (reached by F2)".

GanttProject allows you to download a project directly from a web server. You can then select the URL of the file, usually the server name, directory where you placed the folder, and the name of the file saved in XML. Here’s an example of the page were their files will be stored, (

Creation of WebDav

[4] You must have a WebDAV enabled server because GanttProject doesn’t work with a standard Apache web server. In order to run Gantt Project 1.9.10, you computer must have Java Web Start 1.4.2_04 installed. If you would like a copy of GanttProject 1.9.10 or Java Web Start 1.4.2_04, you can go to my project site ( click my name (Kalvin Dixon) to retrieve that information. GanttProject is free software. Instruction will be located in the appendix on how to install this software on your computer.

WebDAV is not software but it’s a folder that you make under your current website within the server. WebDAV stands for World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning. It is compatible with GanttProject so that is why I used WebDAV. [5] WebDAV is a protocol that allows Web authoring tools and many other document-oriented applications to save documents directly to a Web server and manage the content on the server. Instruction on how to install this folder will be available in the appendix.

FrontPage is software that I used in order to complete the information I placed on ICEE current website. FrontPage made it easier for me to type the information than going into notepad and placing the code in myself. I still had to use notepad for some of the coding on the site like when I had to place the interns’ projects name and pictures on the site. [6] FrontPage is a Microsoft program used to create and edit HTML documents. It can be used to create large complex Web sites. FrontPage is a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor; meaning that you can create the Web page exactly as you want it to look on the screen, and the program adds the HTML source code necessary to make sure that the page looks right in a Web browser.

Java is software that was needed in order to run the GanttProject on the computer. I downloaded Java 1.4.2_04 from the internet because it’s free software located at [7] Java is a largely platform independent, meaning that an application written for one computer is likely to run uncharged on another computer. Another advantage of [7] Java is that it’s an object oriented programming language that makes the designs and maintenance of large programs easier, by encapsulating data and the methods for modifying that data into discrete unit called objects.

Creation of WebDAV

Sample of Work

On this page, I will demonstrate samples of work that was done while interning with ICEE. Sample works will include: GanttProject, WebDav, and FrontPage (ICEE current website).

Project Sample

[8] Configuring IIS for WebDAV:

Step 1: Make sure you are working on the server and create a directory to be used as the WebDAV folder inside your current website. (C: drive on the server, then click Intepub and create a WebDAV folder under that directory).

Step 2: Assign the relevant NTFS file permissions (Read, write, delete files, and Everyone should have Full Control)

Step 3: Assign the relevant IIS directory permissions so the user can view, read, and change files and attributes.

Step 4: Create your physical directory using Windows Explorer and then Right Click Properties. When the properties dialog opens, select the Web Sharing tab. Select the web site to host this directory in the share on drop down list. (See figure 1.1 in Appendix H)

Step 5: Then select the option Share this folder, this will open a dialog to edit the alias. (Using this method will create a virtual directory) (See figure 1.2 in Appendix H)

Step 5 continued: The following are required settings for WebDAV to work correctly, configure these settings in the Edit Alias dialog. (Read, Write, Directory browsing)

Step 6: If using the Internet Service Manager to configure the Virtual Directory properties you should see the following:(See figure 1.3 in Appendix H) Make sure your virtual directory screen looks exactly like the one shown in the figure.

Step 7: You should set the execute permissions to NONEso that a user can not upload an ASP Script or Executable File and then proceed to have it execute on the server.

Step 8: Go to your current website (in my case to see does your site work.

Step 9: Make sure you go into the Computer Management under Internet Information Services and then under Web Service Extensions and allow WebDAV to run on the server.

Step 10: Now WebDAV should be working correctly.

GanttProject

Step 1: Go to [9] and download Java 1.4.2_04 software to either you’re my document folder or on the C: drive.

Step 2: Go to [10] and download GanttProject 1.9.10 to either my document folder or on the C: drive. Note: If you install GanttProject before you install Java 1.4.2_04, it want work because GanttProject is a Java enable program.

Step 3: Go to the Start menu, click on Program, and then browse until you find GanttProject. Click on GanttProject.

Creation of WebDAV

Step 4: In order of creating a task, you must left click in the open white space and click new task.

Step 5: Once the new task pops up, right click to bring up the Properties for New Task. Inside the property, you can change the name of the task, duration, progress, start and end dates, colors, and the shape of the task. Under Predecessors, you can give the task an ID number and place what type it would be. (Start-Finish, Finish-Finish, Finish-Start, Start-Start) Under Resources, you can give it a resource name and under edit notes, you write a message about that specific task.

Step 6: In order to save your work, Go to Project, Save As, then save the document as an XML file.

Step 7: Next, you need to save it to the web server. In order to do that, you must go to Project, Web Server. A dialog box will appear as followed: (See figure 2.1 in Appendix H) Change file path on the server to what ever you save your site as. In my case it would be Type in a login + password.

Step 8: If you would like to open your XML file from the server, simply go to Project, Web Server. A dialog box will appear as followed: (See figure 2.2 in Appendix H) Change file path on the server to what ever you save your site as. In my case it would be Type in a login + password.