[Minibits-general] Developer Notes, Trackers, Form Design, Security, Configuration

[Rob W. <ro...@na...>]

d has sent me some comments by email and I think that the answers I would
send him are going to be of interest to everyone, so I'm forwarding them to
the list.

He asks about the presence of developer notes:
In short there are none.
In terms of how to get the code to work:
1) In order to get the dsn source, download the MiniBits.mdb database from
the downloads section of the project homepage, and set a data source in
windows to point to it, named dsnMiniBits.
http://minibits.sourceforge.net/Downloads/index.html
2) You will also need bolt.ico (which is in CVS) and this will need to be in
the same folder as the code/executable.
3) References are as follows:
	Visual Basic for Applications
	Visual Basic Runtime Objects and Procedures
	Visual Basic Objects and Procedures
	OLE Automation
	Microsoft Data Environment 1.0
	Microsoft Data Environment Instance 1.0
	Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects Library 2.0
	Microsoft DAO 3.51 Object Library
4) Components are as follows:
	Microsoft Common Dialog Control 6.0 (SP3)
	Microsoft FlexGrid Control 6.0
5) Properties:
	Startup form is frmSplash.

A list of MiniBits functions will follow.

d also volunteers assistance in creating the notes - gratefully accepted!


This is a good point to suggest the following...
On the project website are 4 trackers... bugs, support, feature requests,
patches.
I intend to add a fifth, named "Development Activities".
The way I envisage them being used is as follows...
1) A user or developer adds a feature request, bug or support request.
2) A developer then reviews the original item and works out what development
activity is necessary and adds this activity (or if more appropriate, a
developer adds a development activity directly.
3) The development activity references an original feature request
(F000000), bug (B000000) or support request (S000000). Each original
artifact may have one or more development activities.
4) Developers assign development activities to themselves, complete
(referencing the development activity in the CVS log) and close.
5) When all activities are complete, a developer closes the original
artifact.


d also adds the following:

	Initial Suggestions/Notes;

	Form Design - Would it be a good idea to make it look like more of an
	application than a tool?  i.e. use an mdi interface or just clean-up the
	forms and ad some GUI toys.  There's substantial function to the app
	itself so maybe it's time for a shiny interface.

	Security - Let's add some encryption to the password fields and other
	possibly sensitive data. (haven't been too far with this one yet.  don't
	know if there's anything else worth encrypting)

My thoughts:
Form design - the interface does need tidying up quite a lot. Flexibilty is
key, and it would be best to have facility for users to structure their own
layouts etc. With the system, no 2 users will have the same needs,
particularly as the system grows. Thus my suggestion was that we have a
number of new objects: users, groups, permissions (user and group) and menu
items (user and group). Groups of users have common permissions and menus,
which can be tailored to a user's needs. For the menu, I suggested a 3 tier
structure: 2 tiers of folders with functions placed in tiers 1-3. The aspect
of how we display this is another matter altogether!! I suggest we divide
this particular task into 2 areas of activity, and assign a user to look
into the GUI side, and another user or users to create the functions to add,
change and remove users, groups, permissions and menu folders and items.

Security - Yes we need to do some security work. The only truly sensitive
stuff is the password, although to a business, all data may be considered
sensitive. It may work to set account priveliges to the database and to
encrypt it using the access functions. This is something else that needs to
be looked into.

Configuration - We need configuration settings for the system. Any thoughts
on what, how stored, configuration settings would be appreciated.

OK this has turned out to be rather a long email.
Any thoughts would be gratefully appreciated - please send to the list.
Rob