Today I will be writing about Maven using information from the article Maven-Overview by TutorialsPoint. Maven is a project management tool giving a complete build process framework. Mavens objective is to provide a comprehensive, reusable and maintainable model for projects and to provide plugins and tools to interact with this model. Since Maven uses a standard directory layout and default build lifecycle, development teams can quickly set up their project builds. When you have multiple development teams Maven can create a standard build structure for all teams to use. This promotes consistency across the project while developers create reports, builds and testing automation setups. Maven gives a way for developers to manage builds, documentation, reporting, dependencies, SCMs, releases, distribution and mailing lists. Mavens project structure is declared in in the pom.xml file. POM stands for Project Object Model and contains the fundamentals of the entire Maven system. This pom.xml file is similar to the build.gradle file we have seen/used in class. Some features of Maven include its ability to generate a website or PDF including complete documentation, backwards compatibility, automatic parent versioning so that there is no need to specify in the sub module, parallel builds achieving performance improvements of up to 50%, and improved error reporting.

This topic relates to class because it is a software project management tool, which can be very useful to developers. We often used Gradle in class which is a similar concept. I selected this article from TutorialsPoint because it is a useful website for quick references, overviews and tutorials. It is similar to w3schools which is another website I use often for quick tutorials, references, etc.. I would say that the information is reliable, just more shallow as it does not dive deep into topics. I would not use it as the only source when trying to learn a certain subject in depth as you will not get a deep understanding of the material. As an overview though, I would say it is perfect. I personally had an okay understanding of Maven as I had used it a couple of times but never knew the finer details as to how it is different from other project management tools. Some things I had learned from this article are its many features including its use for reporting and documentation. I plan to use project management tools for future projects, so it is good to know the differences and know which one is the right one to use.

Source: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/maven/maven_overview.htm

From the blog CS@Worcester – Austins CS Site by Austin Engel and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Today I will be writing about Gradle and the article “What is Gradle?” on the Gradle, inc website. Gradle, as explained by the company, is a build automation tool that is open source. Gradle can build almost any type of software due to its flexibility. Gradle build scripts have three phases, initialization, configuration, and execution. First, it sets up the environment. Then it constructs a task DAG or Directed Acyclic Graph to decide which tasks need to be ran in which order then executes these tasks. Gradle runs on JVM and depends on the user to have JDK installed in order for it to be used. This is a plus for people have have used the Java platform because you can use standard Java APIs in the build logic. This article is everything you need to understand what Gradle is and how it works. It first gives an overview, split into a summary and five subheadings explaining more into depth on how it functions. After the overview it gives “Five things you need to know about Gradle” which discusses key factors that makes it different than other build automation tools. I selected this topic because we have been using Gradle in class, but I never fully understood its use and how it works. This article answered exactly that. The article is by Gradle inc, so there wont be a more accurate article on what it is and its functionalities. I personally found this article easy to read. As mentioned in my prior blog posts, I like when the reading is split up into subsections and headings. This makes it easier to keep track of what the article is talking about and keeps the information organized. There is not more than 4-5 sentences per subsection which keeps it to the point. Also, the diagrams provided do an excellent job on displaying what the subsection is trying to convey to the reader. For example, their diagram of the DAG that Gradle makes to determine the order of task to be completed is split into two parts. One shows an abstract model for a general view, then it gives an example for a standard java build. By giving the abstract and the practical example, it gives you two diagrams in which you can make a connection to better understand what they are trying to explain. Overall, I recommend this article. I had learned a lot about the tool and will be more confident using it in the future now that I understand its use and how it works.

Source: https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/what_is_gradle.html

From the blog CS@Worcester – Austins CS Site by Austin Engel and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Today, I will be talking about an article titled, “MongoDB : an Introduction” by Harshit Gupta on Geeks-for-Geeks.com. This article explains what MongoDB is in a simple format by comparing it to relational databases. He explains that MongoDB is a NoSQL database meaning it is non-relational. Instead of storing data in a tabular format such as SQL, it stores data in its document model which is much more flexible. This makes it similar to a JSON format (called BSON which stands for Binary JSON). When dealing with big data, it is a much better choice to use MongoDB instead of a relational database because it is horizontally flexible. This means that if the demands of the database grows, we can add more servers so that it can handle the change. While adding a new column to a RDBMS requires replanning of the schema, adding new fields to a NoSQL database is easy because it is schema-less. Another major feature is that MongoDB is a distributed database meaning multiple copies of data is stored across multiple servers making data recovery fast and reliable. The article provides easy to read bullet points on the features of MongoDB, when to use it, and also the differences between MongoDB and RDBMS. It also goes over the languages it supports, how to install it, and provides a list of major companies using it.
The reason I selected this source is because Geeks-for-Geeks has always been a trusted website that I will go to when having problems in programming or with topics in class. They always provide a well thought out, simple explanation for topics that seem confusing in a textbook. While reviews for Geeks-for-Geeks are mixed, it has always been reliable for me and I have never had any problems with it. For basic topics at least, it has been very accurate. The content in this article held up with everything I have learned about MongoDB already, and also, matched up with what other writers said about it.
I chose this topic/article because I thought it would be good for anyone in class who does not yet know what MongoDB is and would like to read up on it. In this course, we will be using MongoDB for our final project to store data so we will be using it in the future. I started learning about MongoDB with this article as a good introduction then took it to more concrete and informative websites to learn about it further. MongoDB is good to learn if you will handling large amounts of data in the future.

Source: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/mongodb-an-introduction/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Austins CS Site by Austin Engel and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.