My Messages module design document

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Contents 1 MyMessages module – Design document 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Module Design 1.2.1 Functionality 1.2.2 Details/Assumptions 1.2.3 Look and Feel 1.2.4 Implementation Details 1.2.5 Implementation Details – Data storage 1.3 Questions

MyMessages module – Design document

version 0.2, dated 9/19/07, by Marton Nagy

Introduction

The following document captures the planned design of the MyMessages module The MyMessages module shall be a JSP replacement for a similar functionality that was earlier provided by SiteScape: it will store and display system generated messages to the user (usually about a report completion), allow the user to view and delete them.

Note that ver.0.2 of the document requires input from Doug. See the last sections…

Module Design

Functionality

• lists the messages currently stored on a user’s personal “MyMessages” area
• allow viewing a selected message
• allow deleting a selected message

Details/Assumptions

• no subfolders or folder management functions are needed
• a message will have a title, a body, a creation date and a sender
• the body of a message is assumed to contain html text

Look and Feel

• look and feel should be similar to MyFiles
• the list displays the title the sender and the creation date of the messages
• functions should be available via menu buttons
• the functions require that a message is selected first, then the function can be invoked by pressing the appropriate button
• the view function opens a new page displaying the message
• the delete function deletes a message and returns to the list (displays a status if there is a problem)

Implementation Details

• the “MyMessage” data will be stored in the database
• the module will be deployed under the ptagis web application
• web pages will be placed under ptagis/home/mymessages
• logging is done via log4j

Implementation Details – Data storage

Note: Items highlighted yellow will require input from Doug.

• the proposed database storage is the following
  • one data table
  • proposed tablename: wqb_messages or something similar containing the word “messages”, prefixed as you think it is appropriate
  • the following table describes the proposed fields (note: that the data types need to be updated to reflect the ingres dialect)
  • in addition to the obvious fields mentioned earlier in the text, a recipient and a message_id (primary key) field is also needed and listed below

Field	Type	Description	Assumptions, notes
message_id	int, PK	A unique id for the message (across all the messages of all the users)	Integer; primary key; need the capability to generate this id automatically
recipient	varchar(50)	The userid of the recipient of the message	Should accommodate a userid (~50 characters?)
title	varchar(256)	The message title	Should accommodate ~256 characters
body	ntext	The message body	Assumed to contain html text, up to ~10,000 characters
sender	varchar(256)	The name of the sender (not necessary a userid, just a display name, like “QueryBuilder”)	Should accommodate ~256 characters
creation_date	datetime	The message creation date/time	Should accommodate a date/time

Questions

How can we accomplish generating values for the message_id field? Can we use a method similar to that in my registered tags (i.e. for the mrt_tag_groups table)? There the next unique key for the tag_group_id field of the table is generated by invoking a stored procedure (which in turn uses a system_keys table to store the latest such id).

If this is an acceptable approach, let’s discuss some of the details: the name and arguments of the stored procedure, the value of the entity_type argument (if such an argument is used, like for registered tags) and perhaps the name and schema of the helper ~system_keys table (just as a reference).