General developer forum

Personal Details

• Name :- Nikhil Mishra
  
• Email :-
  • mishranikhil@yahoo.com,
  • nikhil.mishra@kuliza.com,
  • mishra007in@gmail.com,
  • nikhilmishra@moodle.org
    
• Other contact methods
  • Yahoo IM with id:mishranikhil@yahoo.com
  • Jabber:-nikhilmishra@jabber.org (* new)
    
  • CellPhone: +91-9632830680
    

Flow of document:-

• Motivation
• Research which is my background study
  
  • Report Genration (
    • What it is, and its parts
    • Moodle support for reports
      • Gradebook for graded items
      • Admin Reports and Scorm Reports
      • Limitation of existing support( need for Custom Interface)
  • Solution
    • Existing Tools
      • PHP Based
        • Easy Integration But less flexible and less exported formats and graphs supported
      • Java Based
        • Need Of Integration but very rich in content and support for all formats.
          
        • Ways Of Integration.
• Deliverables
  

Motivation :

I take this opportunity to introduce myself as Nikhil currently enrolled in Final Semester of MS IT @ DAIICT.
Memories of My first submission 4 years ago on moodle are still crystal clear. Ever since I was very much excited about this elearning mammoth. I started my humble journey as Teaching Assistant by creating quizzes,forums ,wikis and podcasts and soon became a poular face for moodle related queries in campus.

Fortunately, a recent happening wherein my professor wanted to track trends of student progress in form of rich reports had left me brainstorming over custom report generation interface.Being on final semester with no course to study this semster and 6 month period free, I decide to take this issue. Luckily after some moodling and googling I found that I was not alone :- my post on Feb,20 on forum proved fruitful.The same day our post idea became issue on moodle tracker (Thanks to A.T. Wyatt ) . I have enclosed Links of forum and Tracker your kind perusal.

Encl:

1: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116895

2: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-18323

Research and BackGround Study :-

• Report generation In General :-
  

What it is and Parts ?

One might wonder What Report is?

In layman’s terminology ;-"Presentation Of required data to user in required format".Data Resides in database which we acces usually by an sql statementThus Basically any report ultimately boils down to an sql to fetch given data.After above It is Presentation tier job to present in required form to user.

• Existing Support For Reports
  

Moodle has very good built-in rich reports. Lets look at moodle report generation

We can divide report generation in broadly 2 parts

1) GradeBook

2) Admin Reports

3) Scorm Reports which work on Scorm repository and are based on SCORM.

So we are left with 2 option :-

Admin Reports is set of collection of built-in administrative reports.

Gradebook is very rich in term of reporting, calculating columns for graded items.

It has also support for plugin called visual for graphs and charts.

• Limitation of existing support( need for Custom Interface)

Lets Take an example where user needs a non-administrative Reports for non-graded items ?

-> Question ultimately introduces need of custom interface for report generation

Solution

Well one might think to start with writing your self code base including whole reporting engine including layers discussed above.

The complexity will increase when we try to include most of report needs. ? The other concerns to a developer are number of export formats our solution is going to support

Adding to it, it would be more of reinventing wheel because many open source developers have developed cutting edge business intelligence and reporting tools

So we need to think in directions of integration of existing powerful tools

Existing Tools:-

Following are Existing Popular Open Source Reporting Tools:-

1) Jasper

2) BIRT

3) Pentaho :- unfortunately a Commercial open source so cost of ownership is a point to ponder.

4) PHP Reports

We can divide above options into Jasper and BIRT in group of JAVA based Reproting tools and PHPReports as in other group of PHP based tool.

PHP Based

• PHPReports can be easily integrated with moodle but is not as rich and flexible as other alternatives

JAVA Based

• Support for all file formats export and Import
• All types of Charts Posssible
• Flexible for Custom Reports
• But Moodle is PHP and Tools are JAVA ?
  

So we need to have think integrating Jasper and BIRT :-

Integration Of Java-Base Reporting Tools :-

In brief following are 4 ways of possible integration :-

· SOAP over HTTP via XML-RPC

· Quercus via Resin Application server

· PHP/JAVA bridge based on Java Script Reference (JSR 223)

· Simple redirection to Reporting tool and getting results i.e user directly interacts with our reporting tool. Thus 2 independent server would be running as One transparent server to user.

I have also a good background study for each of these tools which I will post in forum.

I have vison of Reporting Interface which provides Drag and Drop Facility in addition to standard SQL support.

Schedule Of Deliverables

Till April 20

Installing Moodle :- Status Completed

Learning SVN and Build system:- Completed

Setting Up SVN/CVS with moodle :- Status Completed

Setting Up Build : - Status Completed

Building A basic Block and Module:-Completed

Refining Of Problem Statement And User Requirements-Status Ongoing

Freeze on First Version Of Reporting Requirements after Feedback:- Status Ongoing

April 20- May23

Delivarable: Project Estimation Sheet with effort and hours.

Requirement Specifications,SDS,ER Diagram.Activity Diagrams

Strecth Goals : A Hello World Report.

Prepare An PERT sheet for tasks :- 3 Days

Outline Tasks for Month:-

Get Acquainted with norms of community.

Gap Analysis Of Open Source Tools For the Features.

Decide frequency Of Planned Meetings With Mentor

Freeze on Reporting TOOL.

Biweekly possibly Friday as per Mentors convenience : Re factoring Of Schedule to accomplish chages and uncertainites

Informally,I will Start Coding.

Till June 20

Delivarable:-First Live Version Of Reporting tool Open.

Tasks:-

Begin Massive coding on class diagrams as output of previous activity

Commit very 4th day to your branch and take feedbacks.

Strecth Goals for June 20 :-Create atleast 1 Theme for the same.

Create a Youtube Video for Promotion.

June 20 - To July 20:-

Deliverable :-Version two with GUI i.e including Drag and Drop for reports to be live.

Tasks:-

Send Code For MidTerm Evalutions.

Get Feedbacks and Improve Upon same

Wirte Outline Test Cases.

REST:-

Delivrable:Lots Of videos , documentation and our custom reporting interface

Tasks:-

FEEDBACK from community.

Create Context sensitive Help :- host it on moodle.org

Create You tube Video as Manual fro your s/w.

Write Blog about your experience during GSOC.

Preparing For Moodle Lounge

My Details :-

http://placement.daiict.ac.in:8084/placement/daiict/resumes/200712014.pdf

Au revoir

MElange Betrayed me dint allow to edit my app......... ?