I followed the instructions from the first activity in Block 3, clicked Finish to generate my web service in Eclipse, waited, waited, and got… a 404 Not Found page – aaargh! Had to go out almost immediately, but checked again when I got back and noticed port numbers being mentioned. So I tried switching off the Windows firewall, and hooray! My first web service!! It asked me my name and said Hello to me. (Ok so that part was not a surprise, but it was so great to see it working!)
On checking it out, I noticed all kinds of other files had been generated: WSDL, metadata, Java classes and libraries, and more – I guess that’s the rest of Block 3 then…
I got 94% for TMA 2 – one of my best grades ever! I thought it was really hard, especially developing the XML Schema. But I guess I must have kept on at it enough and made some lucky deductions about what things meant. Also, when I made references to the security considerations covered at the beginning of Block 2, those seemed to be well received.
I’m still not entirely clear on how DOM, SAX and XSLT relate to each other, but hopefully that will become clearer later as I do more of the practical work.
I think in this section of the course I have really benefitted from having just completed the certificate in Web Applications Development beforehand – it covers some similar ground, though from more of a technical development perspective and with different programming languages and technologies.
Got my TMA in – I thought parts of this were quite hard and / or confusing, but these are the links that I found helpful:
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Here are some useful links for Block 2, mostly about XML, XML Schema, XSLT etc, including a free book to download.
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Hooray! I’ve found out how to embed Google and YouTube videos in my WordPress blog (very web 2.0 I know) by using a WordPress plugin called Easytube, so here are some of the videos referenced in the course material:
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Well, my wish did partly come true: it turned out there was a problem with the OU’s ‘Tutorial Finder’ and I did have a tutorial after all. My tutor emailed us and posted the details in the course forum.
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table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df td {margin:0 !important;padding:0 !important;border:0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df tr.lfmHead a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/header/playlist/regular_red.png) no-repeat 0 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df tr.lfmEmbed object {float:left;}table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df tr.lfmFoot td.lfmConfig a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat 0px 0 !important;;}table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df tr.lfmFoot td.lfmView a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -85px 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetplaylist_8e020b1197918c611ee9fda0d8ad90df tr.lfmFoot td.lfmPopup a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -159px 0 !important;}
I’ve carried on experimenting with Last.fm and now that I’ve listened to more of the music and added some songs to my playlist I thought I’d try out some of the widgets: it’s Web Services in action folks!
So I’ve figured out how to get the playlist widget and ‘Top Albums Musical Quilt’ for embedding in WordPress (here they are – not sure if the red goes with the blog theme or not!). I haven’t listened to enough to get my personal charts yet, and I was disappointed that you have to pay a subscription to get your own personal radio station, but maybe I’ll do that to cheer myself up if I don’t get the couple of days of extra work I’ve been interviewing for.
table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 td {margin:0 !important;padding:0 !important;border:0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 tr.lfmHead a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/header/quilt/album_horizontal_red.png) no-repeat 0 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 tr.lfmEmbed object {float:left;}table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmConfig a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat 0px 0 !important;;}table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmView a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -85px 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetquilt_0459f669785b786d76592f0268fccf14 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmPopup a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -159px 0 !important;}
Hooray! After working on this intensively in all my scraps of free time for the last week, I have done the TMA with 3 hours to spare!! Hooray!!!
I paid a visit to the course forum, to check for any new advice on the TMA and to find out the time of the tutorial.
Several people had posted the answers to the ‘Personal history of the Internet’ exercise. Some had used Prestel and similar early bulletin boards. As often happens with the OU, it’s reassuring when so many of them are about the same age as me!
This was an interesting exercise in the course materials: once you start looking back and putting dates to your recollections, you realise things really were quite different, and not that long ago.
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(plus much more on the T320 website!)
