GIPSEPoisonService

GIPSEPoisonService has been committed to the repository this week. The service has been created using Introduce and then modeled around Brian's AMDSService. I will begin writing test cases next week and hopefully not run into anything major.

Peter and Brian asked me to assist on a few things for gridviewer application. I took a look at the code and the UI have a few ideas around where I think we can add functionality to it in the distant future. Peter has worked through some tough requirements and developed some strong code to handle all the p0lygon/map manipulations.

1. MVC
I think it would be a good step to introduce a controller to the gridviewer. The controller would not only to handle web user interface requests but also to process remoting protocols or generate specific outputs on demand. To handle MVC, I believe we should look to framework's such as Spring, JSF, Struts, etc. My preference is Spring-MVC, especially now that 3.0M2 release will be REST complaint, which is another consideration for the gridviewer.

2. JSON/RSS/XML output
The controller mentioned above would facilitate the development of outputting additional response types per client requests. Reusing all the business logic Peter has developed we could "re-format" the output to a resemblance of the AMDS schema in JSON. The only requirement to consume the JSON request would be a simple html file with a few lines of javascript. We could even output RSS for notification purposes (Spring 3.0M2 has controllers designed especially for this purpose).

3. Authentication
The application currently does session based authentication. We could potentially look to Spring for handling authentication. We would gain persistence (remember me), an adaptor for authenticating with OpenID, LDAP, and an easier path to cross-domain authentication if that were to become a requirement in the future. Spring-Security (formerly ACEGI) also supports X.509 certificates.

4. UI
I showed Brian a mash-up that is a few years old called housingmaps.com. It basically takes craigslist and google maps and creates city-based maps of the current RSS listings. I think it is a good example of making the map the focal point of the UI. By making the map larger and moving the selection components to the right, I think we can really improve the UI.

5. REST
Also I think we should use look to using GET requests which could facilitate additional functionality in the future such as remembering passed searches or allowing users to easily find URLs in their address bar. We should always work towards a REST architecture.

These are just a couple initial thoughts for future development (post-August).