CDAC: My Second Home (Part Six)

February: Data, Database, Database Management System

The age old book of DB

The ADWE (Application Development using Database System and Web Technologies) module started in the second week. We got the book DBMS by Korth. There is no need to go to gym for a workout, Korth in one hand and Tanenbaum in another would suffice to do an exercise. Most of the students kept the books at the book shelves which were at the left corner of the reception. Who will do an exercise in taking the books up and down from room to lab! The ADWE module was divided into three parts: Database System, Web Technologies and CBSD (Component based Software Development). 

First we had DBMS. The teaching faculty was from CDAC, Juhu. The introduction lecture was taken by Golden Raymond Sir. The ER (Entity Relationship) model was explained in detail by Urja (Urjaswala Vora) Ma’am. Her lectures were very engaging; dare you even think of dozing off during the lecture. The SQL (Structured Query Language) was taken by Surbhi Ma’am.

We had to develop a Web based project for this module and present the mini-world by mid-Feb. Nine groups were made using some algorithm on the student list (we later cracked what the algorithm was!). My group consisted of: I, Sharvari, Naveen Srivastava, Pratham and Yogesh Sahu. We thought of a lot of topics; made a list; then having the discussions finalized the Invitation Portal. Our mini-world was approved and we got Prakash Sir as project guide. A project presentation was to be made. We had to give a good name for our website. We named it as Nimantran (which means Invitation); to this Prakash Sir added that as the invitations would be online make it as e-mantran and thus the name of our website became www.emantran.com

The topics of other eight groups were also interesting. Ranjith and group developed a website www.lucky-bid.in for Auction purpose. Ritika and group did www.merashehar.com for City search. Piyush and group did www.books.com an Online bookstore. Niket and group made a photo sharing website named www.memories.in Bhavya and group did www.easy-loan.com for easy and hassle free loan facilities. A blogging site www.lets-speak.com was done by Tijo Thomas and group. We had a website for Happy Weddings; www.wedding-weaver.com by Madhur and group. The last one was social networking site www.say-hello.com by Litty and group.

Meanwhile the lectures on Normalization, Transaction, Concurrency, etc were taken by Rajeev Sir. All those normal forms 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF, 4NF and 5NF seemed to be abnormal to understand; and the ACID (not acid) properties, locks, etc. For the practical sessions we had to write and execute queries on the as usual database schema which includes student, department, course, etc tables. By the end of month, the ER diagrams were done. Working in groups in not so easy; everybody’s point of view has to be considered. There were good as well as bad effects on us; but we had to work together. Tomorrow the same will have to be faced in workplace. So as I said earlier CDAC was preparing us to deal in the actual world.

March: Welcome to the Web World

The second module was Web technologies. It started with the installation of Eclipse Indigo and Apache TomCat server. The night before DB Quiz, there was power cut due to some technical problem. So I had to study from the book only, no ppts or question solving on the net. Also we had candle light dinner in the canteen; enjoyed it. On 8^th, it was Holi. All the boys were playing with colors and mud (eco-friendly) and water (not so eco-friendly!!) at the backside. Most of the SANDHAAN t-shirts were torn to pieces that day. 

Manoj Sir and Shekhar Sir used to take our lectures. The syllabus got the whole range of technologies covered; starting from HTML, XHTML, CSS, JS, XML, SAX, STAX, XSL, Servlets, JSP, JSTL, AJAX, dojo, jQuery, etc. Sorry to the non-tech readers to bore you with the long list of abbreviations. But we did study all these in two weeks of time and also implement it in the project. The site http://www.w3schools.com/ was there to our rescue. We did with the database tables and form designing. Little tit-bits were always on during the project work.

MGPT Mania:

I admit that I was a MGPA maniac to my batch; the only one to submit MGPAs even after the PRGF module. All the 15 assignments of DS were done. Out of 16 of the Java assignments, I could complete 14 and was struggling with one X for the Paragraph Formatting since the last week of Jan. Still no luck! Now about the MGPT: the student completing one MGPT gets the certificate of completing FPGDST with Honors. And I wanted that word ‘Honors’ on my certificate. The day of action was 12^th and the problem was “Cut the string”. We got only 90 minutes for program execution unlike the 180minutes of usual MGPAs. Hence, it was called MGPT. I cracked the logic and made many test cases during writing session itself. During execution, the worst nightmare:          

                    Y.Y.Y.Y.Y.X.Y.Y

I still remember it was at the sixth position. But there was hope that like Magic Matrix, I would complete with this one also. But it seemed though luck was not smiling at me that day. The time was up. No one completed the program. I could feel the pain of one X now, this was experienced by many. It was literally a heart-breaking one. I just packed my bag and went home that evening. The next day I got a call from Sharvari and friends that there was error in the input. So my program was completely executing. At last I am getting “Honors, Honors, Honors!!!”

The third module CBSD (Component based Software development) started in the last week. I remembered those theory lectures of school and college. The lectures were taken by Madhavi Parchure Ma’am. It included J2EE, RMI and all the enterprise applications. We had to eat those EJBs (Enterprise Java Beans). Do you wanna have one ?

Read next: CDAC: My Second Home (Part Seven)