R E P O R T

"Vivian's JDBC Client" (session tracking version)
"Vivian's JDBC Client" (hidden fields version)

Contents Conception The Scenario Technical details-problems References - Bibliography

Conception
As I helped some students to do their servlets or JSP pages, I found it quite easy to do simple queries in a data base. So, I thought I had to find something more challenging (as always :). And as I had already searched the web to find a decent JDBC Client some weeks before, without interesting results I have to admit, I thought to try making my own tiny JDBC Client :)

And while I had some regrets, because it didn't seem to be very educative, while I was working on it, I came up with the idea that it IS educative in a way... Every time that the user chooses an action, I give him back the results and the according query. I think that someone using it, will find it extremely easy as an interface. Watching at the same time the effects that a query has, he might memorize it easily.

So, I started to implement my JDBC Client ...

The dissapointing moment was when Daniel showed me PHPAdmin, that does the same thing in a more advanced way of course, and then I started feeling as I fool that I was trying to do my JDBC Client. So, I said to myself that it is a good occasion to start also studying Java seriously. It seemed a very good reason and gave me courage to go on :)

The scenario

Introduction page:

Show tables mode:

Action mode:

Feedback mode:

Technical details - problems
Eventhough I knew that I needed the session tracking, I thought it easier to start first the implementation using hidden fields inside forms and make it work. So, I did the version 1 of my JDBC Client. It took me quite sometime, mostly because I didn't work continously and every time I started again, I had to remember everything all over again. Finally it worked, and I decided to pass seriously to the improved version with session tracking.

As I had already used session tracking in my previous exercise for staf2x, it wasn't such a big problem. But, passing things to functions (mostly objects) and getting them back through session tracking it was really a complicated story. The worst thing was, that even that sometimes my client seemed to work fine, when I tried to add a new part, the server was dead and nothing worked anymore! Really a dissapointing story... although I am proud of what I managed to do :)

The things that I am proud of :)

• session tracking: keeping all the valuable information such as the dbase, the table chosen, the field chosen, etc
• hidden fields: a good occassion to remember again hidden fields and exercise a little in passing variables around html pages ...
• educative compliant: live testing of simple MySQL queries.
• simple interface: that you cannot get lost by passing from one query to another.

References - Bibliography - Sites

• TECFA's JDBC Resources (especially for servlets)
• Java Web Server API (including javax.servlet)
• "MySQL & mSQL" by Yarger, Reese & King, O'Reily, ISBN 1-56592-434-7
• "JDBC Database Access with Java" by Hamilton, Catell & Fisher, (The Java series) ADDISON WESLEY ISBN 0-201-30995-5
• "Java Gently" by Judy M. Bishop,ADDISON WESLEY, ISBN 0-201-59399-8
• "Java in a Nutshell" by D.Flanagan et al., O'Reily, ISBN 1-56592-304-9
• "Java examples in a nutshell" by D.Flanagan, O'Reily, ISBN 1-56592-371-5