[Rapla-developers] Interested in customizing Rapla

[Sieru E. K. <s.e...@re...>]

Dear Developers,
 
I am an MSc student who is working on developing a web-based resource
management application for my thesis. I found your application, Rapla as an
ideal application to start from and would like your help in understanding
it. The application I am developing is in the context of ICT for Development
and I am developing the application for a poor African government, free of
charge, to contribute towards their efforts of narrowing the digital divide.
To be specific, the client is looking for a way of managing its limited
bandwidth by introducing a software to keep track of and limit the number of
simultaneous video conference connections inside its private government
network. At the moment, the use and scheduling of its video conferencing
utilities is being managed manually. The government uses its VC for setting
up meetings between remote rural districts and urban centers, giving them
access to the latest information found in the cities. The current system is
vulnerable to resource conflicts when multiple bookings take place. It also
freezes the whole system when too many concurrent connections take place.
There are more triggers for resource conflicts in their system. The the
bandwidth can only entertain a maximum of 12 simultaneous connections at a
time (out of 600 users) and also the video streaming server can handle a
maximum of 96 connections. I need to integrate these limitations into Rapla.
But the most difficult requirement they need to be met is to introduce an
intelligent resource management algorithm based on a scale of meeting
importance and user importance (clearance level). That is, they want to be
able to give some users the right to preempt an existing booking of a lower
importance with a more urgent or important meeting. That is, I need to
configure different government users to have different privileges, as well
as configuring different meeting types to have different priorities in the
system. The main problem is doing a balance between meeting importance vs.
user importance (some high level officials also use the video conference
system using the same gov network). I have come up with an algorithm to
address some of that. Rapla fulfils some of the client requirements but not
all.
 
My problem right now is understanding how all the components of Rapla come
together. I have spent the last one month fully dedicating my time to
reading through the codes and classes of Rapla, as well as the JavaDoc
generated by the source. I have the system set up on my pc, with a tomcat
server, MySQL, and eclipse. I have also looked through the main classes such
as Reservation, Conflicts, Permission, Appointment, Facade, etc. However, I
am still discovering more classes that theses classes depend on, or are
called from and it looks like a never-ending maize to me. I am therefore on
the verge of giving up on Rapla altogether and starting a small version of
my own application. I don't want to do that. I prefer to make use of all the
efforts you have all put together and add on my little modification. As I am
running out of time with my thesis work, I would be very much grateful if
any of you can give me some sort of heads up on how these components all
come together. If there is some sort of data flow diagram, or sequence
diagram, or something to tell me which components/classes I should be
modifying in order to satisfy the clients, please do share it with me.
 
With much respect,
 
Sieru
 

___________________________________________________________________

 

Sieru Efrem Kebede 

Advanced EU MSc (Erasmus Mundus)
Network and e-Business Centred Computing



University of Reading, UK
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

University of Carlos III Madrid, Spain

www:
http://www.reading.ac.uk/sse/pg-taught/sse-pgtadvancedEuropeanErasumsMundusM
Sc.asp