UCMB-IMS

1. UCMB-IMS Milestone 5 presentation Harlan Broughton Stephen Link

2. What is it? • Web based management system started as a project last semester. • Intended to actually be used by the marching band to help maintain synchronicity among members. Web Based management system

3. What we started with • Originally informed of the idea of the project, and we started with little instruction • We had a strong idea of what we were dealing with, but the devil was in the details. • We found the project to be a good starting ground but ultimately unfinished program. • It seemed like the perfect project: a great challenge that could actually be used.

4. Specifications • The IMS (Information Management System) is broken down into six sections: • Registration • Login • Data Access • Members-Only • Notification • Pep-band Scheduler

5. Specifications • To gain access to the IMS the end-user must fill out the registration form and submit it. • Once the registration is approved by the band office administration the user will be able to log in and access the rest of the system.

6. Specifications • The user is directed to the Members Registration Page if they do not log in to a preexisting user account • Information can be edited later on Member Registration

7. After registration, the user is sent an email prompt to confirm registration. This brings the user to a the activation page. Specifications

8. Specifications • The notification subsystem serves as a tool for communication between members of the band. • It works similarly to any standard email account, because email is in fact the actual mode of communication used behind the scenes. • Administrators choose who may contact who, based on band membership and status. Notification System

9. Specifications • This table contains five columns which provide information for the user to select content to play. • Administrators have the addition options to delete and add media. • In limited testing it has worked Media

10. Specifications • The scheduler helps both pep-band and administrators deal with attendance of pep-band games. • The game page displays data related to a specific game, such as the Game ID, Location, and Opponent, among others. • The attendance area on the lower half of the page will display differently for each user. If you are a member of the pep-band you will see an attendance list of all people attending the game from your section, as well as a button to 'Register' or 'Unregister' which will remove the users name from the attendance sheet. Pep Band Scheduler

11. Original Proposed Time Line

12. How it should work • Site built using Visual Studio • Database created using SQL Server • Site Hosted using IIS • DNS provided by dyndns.com • Windows Communication Foundation to put database and site together

13. The Problem • WCF wont work, so nothing can converse between site and DB • Therefore, cannot stream media, populate tables, log in, or transfer information for FileMaker. • Solution?

14. Web Hosting • Internet Information Services • Microsoft’s web server, second in popularity to Apache • Dyndns.com • Free dns hosting

15. Database Hosting • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 • Easy to use, free via MSDN

16. Building the site • Visual Studio 2008 SP2 used for primary development (using C#) • Microsoft Expression Blend 4 for visually editing the xaml pages • .Net Reflector to edit the dll’s for specific functionality

17. Building the site (cont) Expression Blend Data Access (Above) Edit account (Left)

18. Security/Encryption • Encryption of the data was very important aspect of our project. • If this was to be used at all encryption is a must. Lots of personal information is stored on our databases. • Combination of data encryption and server-based • Our final encryption algorithm is based on a set of multiple keys which XOR their values with the information. • Decryption XORs the information with the keys in reverse order to retrieve the data.

19. Security/Encryption • Our algorithm was not over complex in order to save time when interacting with the database. • Our first problem came when dealing with how the server received the incoming information. • It would parse the information with headers to distinguish different types. This conflicted when we would encrypt the data, and it would then get lost in the database.

20. Security • We eventually were crafty with how we encrypted the data, and had to change the way the server managed it, but we got it working. • This problem did set us back slightly. • Also uses IIS-based authentication to confirm usability

21. FileMaker Integration • FileMaker Integration step was to implement the FileMaker program into the IMS. • It is a clean way of handling displays for a file system. • It is highly customizable and neat.

22. FileMaker Integration • It originally seemed very straightforward and good way to clean up our GUI. • Unfortunately the more we tried to implement it, the more daunting of a task it become. • The problem came with how the IMS was originally designed. It is not designed well for change at all, so full implementation • If we were to directly implement FileMaker we would need to redesign much of the project. • Did start to implement a simple function to output the chosen information for the user to save, but did not have time to complete.

23. Reflections • Good choice for project, since allowed to learn and work with a number of interesting technologies • Design is simple, but setup is complicated • Most parts worked well together, but WCF not working doomed the rest