[codeninja]

Hi. My students and I are finding this site very helpful compared to others. I can't explain how difficult the first full year of Java teaching has been. It is so much different than just working on your own, not to mention the fact that outside forces direct 50% of what you do.

Anyway a new bacth of students are begining Java soon. They will work on their projects from next fall, the Spring is their introduction.

However, one mistake I made last year was not doing enough real-world projects. I focused too much on the curriculum examples and they simply bore me. I actually do not love programming but I always have to do it for one reason or another. It has never been my primary job. The one thing I can say is that when I have had to program it has been for an actual project that needed to be done.

So I want your opinions on the following question / scenario:


If a student can read/write and sort information they can cover 40% of their requirements.

The curriculum is basically designed to have the students USE ARRAYS.

This is not practical for editing and accessing data that needs to be changed often.

So most students want to use something else. Normally they will have 4-6 fields of data to sift.

The program must not be depended on a webserver in anyway; but database support on the users computer can be setup. Applets are not part of the curriculum- neigther are beans - or .jsp style work.

Given the following choices which one would you choose. No detailed explanation is needed but is appreciated.

1. Use multidimensional arrays only and call it a day.


2. Store data in a csv text file and read it into an array for sorting and have a simple file reader program to edit it upon demand.

3. Use a text files with a more complex keyword search based algorithm.

4. Store info in XML and try and use SAX or JDOM to read it in and sort it (honestly the XML JAVA is harder for me than PHP with XML I cannot work out the sorting. I have a PHP based DB on my website and it is very simple. )

5. Use the JDBC with a textfile/flat file based data store


6. Use the JDBC with MYSQL or something similar.


7.????

_________________________________________________________

[Programmist]

Those are a lot of choices and my decision would be based on what you're trying to teach your students. Learning to use arrays is critical. But if they already know that then, I'd move to parsing XML. Once again, if that's easy for your students, and you're just looking for an easy way to store data with a small footprint, I'd say use the new JavaDB in JDK 6.

Quote

ava DB is Sun's supported distribution of the open source Apache Derby 100% Java technology database. It is fully transactional, secure, easy-to-use, standards-based -- SQL, JDBC API, and Java EE -- yet small, only 2MB.

In the "real world" object relational mapping technologies, such as Hibernate and the new EJB 3.0 standard are pretty much the norm for larger projects. Very seldom will you see any project using arrays to store data received from a database (unless the data is VERY simple, e.g. one column). Like I say, knowing how to use arrays is critical, but using them in this way would be a bit misguided.