As of today, the nightly build (which I'’ve just set up to auto-update every weekday at 2 AM Central Time) contains features for custom reports. This is finally a done deal, at least as it was planned; there’’s always room for improvement.

I was about to cut a new release, but the target is still to have Multi-Format Report Output in by version 0.02.00, which is the next scheduled release. This project would surely benefit from a better understanding of project management, release timelines, and the like, but at this point I want to stick to my simple plan, get in the features that should be in for the next version, and release.

In any case, it feels great to have these things ready.

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The Polymer project is moving to a new server, where I'’ll be able to host more sample apps and do a little more online. (The shared hosting over at netsol just wasn'’t cutting it…)

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The past couple of months have seen this project move its central office (um, my home, actually) from New York to Texas, which is surprisingly disruptive to a person’’s workflow. Nonetheless, work has progressed on the custom reporting features, and I'’m very close to declaring them done. That is, for native renderer. Customized output is also available via plugable renderers, but none have yet been written. Probably the first of those would be for CSV, since it seems to be in greatest demand among current users.

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The Polymer Wiki is now live on this site, at this point containing little more than a table of contents on the main page. I'’m also using it to document features that are under development for future release; right now that’’s just Custom Reports and Multi-Format Report Output. I'’m finding it makes much more sense to document from the start, rather than code first and try to document later.

I decided to go with DokuWiki — the default look is clean from the start, and it has a permissions model that I could easily understand. Right now there is so little content that I am not opening it up for traditional Wiki use; that is, it’’s not set up for anyone to edit but me. As the content and user-base grows, I will open it up to more access. For now, I want to see it grow in content and usefulness both for me and for existing and potential users.

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Still here. I'’m currently in production of a major international event, in which our Polymer app is playing a key role. I arrived in NYC today, just days after moving my family half-way across the country, which all happened just days after I returned from a major international conference in Korea. I expect to be able to sit down to a decent programming schedule after the 17th of this month.

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Posted today a “second release” which is not much more than a complete version of the poorly posted first release. Licensing is clear (GPL), there is a basic ReadMe with minimal install and configure instructions, and all the code is there. There’’s also a growing ToDo list, which should actually find itself on a Polymer Wiki soon.

In any case I am wildly excited just to have this code out under the GPL. Much much more to do, but this is the big start.

Your comments are heartily welcomed, preferably on the Help Forum on Sourceforge. Especially suggestions for improvement and your help requests to get this installed and running on your system. All posts are monitored by me personally, and you can (still) post without having a Sourceforge account.

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Although it’’s not an actual release, I'’m proud to announce that Polymer is now officially running as the base of a real, live application. About 30 minutes ago I removed the original Data Center application, which was Polymer’’s evolutionary forebear, and replaced it with a version that runs as a truly separate application running on top of the most current version of the Polymer matrix. The look and feel are identical, and only a few feature improvements were been made, so the Data Center app on its surface looks and acts just like it did before. But underneath — aahahah! Underneath! — it’’s a real live Polymer, just like it should be!

Ah, how nice.

My current urgent project at work (see last post) prevents me from sparing even the time to upload a current snapshot, mainly because none of it is really ready for assembly, the files aren'’t prepped for licensing, lots of minute reasons. But the upside is that once this project is done we get to release a system that supports multiple interfaces and targetable actions, which make the whole thing much more flexible.

More to come….

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It’’s a reality that all current Polymer development is happening alongside the development of my primary Polymer application, which for now we'’ll call Data Center. (It’’s a proprietary app for data management at my company, so the details of it have to be pretty unimportant in this discussion). This app is actually the evolutionary ancestor of Polymer, though it’’s developing into a Polymer instance itself.

The latest push in project development is in-house live production, which basically means fine-tuning Data Center to operate as an application of the default Polymer installation, rather than just a modified hack of Polymer. A side-effect of this push is that I can'’t really do much other development on Data Center until this conversion is complete, because I'’m making a boatload of changes to the underlying code which will simply break Data Center in a slew of unpredictable ways if I do it piecemeal. Combine that with a workload that’’s had me out of the office on special projects for half of the last couple of months, and you get a production schedule that pretty much crawls, if anything. But the newest mandate at work is to set up — in the next two weeks — a section in Data Center that will require not only stabilization of the Polymer app, but the addition of two new features: targets and interfaces.

Targets are actions that can be targetted directly from external links — you can link directly to a specific app action, and Polymer will make sure you log in, then send you through the action (unlike the present method whereby you can only link to the app and have Polymer present you with a login screen and then display the app’’s “Welcome” or default template.) This is the same as you expect to see on Sourceforge or most any other secured site: if you'’re uncredentialled, the app asks for your credentials and then sends you on your credentialled way; but up to now, Polymer hasn'’t been set up for that.

We'’re also going to have to implement support for multiple interfaces, so that a single application can have two or more totally different looks and feature sets, depending on the interface being used. Think of it as separate entrances to the same application. As an example, in many businesses, you need a staff entrance that’’s completely separate — looks and functions differently — from the customer entrance; some restaurants have separate entrances for different kinds of customers: drive-through, walk-up, and sit-down customers all need a different set of protocols to meet their requirements. Multiple interface support will allow Polymer to present any number of different feature sets to the user in a similar way.

With a two-week deadline I am pretty excited. It means my job is pushing me to get these features implemented and fully stabilized. With this I am suspending some of the more aesthetic elements of our first release; basically I need to get this tool working for my employer, and after that focus on releasing code. But it gives me a clear goal, and once it’’s done I should have a solid (if poorly written and buggy) code base to share.

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One of my favorite tools in this project has been the project wiki, which does a great job of helping me keep my notes in order as the project develops from a whirling nebula of vague concepts into a clear set of features and documentation that I can actually release to the public. This wiki, currently hosted at xwiki.com is password-protected, so that right now only I can edit it, yet it gives me the editing flexibility and speed that a wiki should.

It’’s just slow as Christmas.

I'’m in the process now of trying to find a replacement, preferably one I can host on the Polymer site at sourceforge, and which will give me password protection and decent speed. Just spent too long with WikkiTikkiTavi, only to find out that as nice as it is, it doesn'’t seem to provide login-based access limitations.

Pressing on…

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I'’ve finally finished up with basic code standardization, something that I felt should be brought up at least to a minimal level if I expect to share this code with anyone else. There are still items here and there that do not match the PCS spec, but I am working on those now little by little.

My next goal is to move Polymer into production, at least on a single private project. Some readers may know from the history of Polymer that it has grown out of an effort to port an MS Access database application to PHP/mySQL. That project is full of many application-specific features, and the bulk of my work right now is to spin off a pure Polymer implementation that contains only Polymer features, which I can then release for public use. At the same time, that Polymer release must be capable of supporting all the features and functionality of the database app, whether by native features or by providing for customization. The goal here is to be sure that whatever customization a developer needs to do can be done without hacking the actual Polymer distribution code, and most of this is done through “custom function and action” features as described in the Polymer documentation’’s Feature Notes.

Besides the occasional tweaks to the Polymer source code, I'’m also making lots of small changes to the application code: things that were hard-coded that shouldn'’t have been, table and column names that have changed since Polymer took over certain features, etc. All of this is aimed at the relatively short-term goal of having that whole application, which is now in production with hundreds of templates and thousands of database records, to run on actual Polymer_dev code. Again, it’’s Polymer’’s Working Philosophy: even if it’’s a little clunky, make it work, make it stable, and get it out the door.

Timeline for release is far enough away not to try and state it here. The feature set is starting to gel, as is the concept of Polymer’’s role in containing an application, along with instructions for installation and setup, and other things that will be necessary at some basic stable level before we can really expect anybody to try and work with this program.

More as we progress…

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