Setting Up Development Environment for CS520

This guide is for setting up a development environment for CS520 under Windows 2K/XP/Vista. All the software are available online for free. You may also get all the software and the screen capture videos from the MSDNAA software computer in the CS department office. The files are in the CS520 Software folder on the Windows Desktop. The total size of the files is about 360MB. You need to bring with you a flash drive or a writable CD.

1. JDK and Tomcat

Download and install the latest JDK from Sun Microsystems - we only need the Java SE Development Kit (JDK), not Java EE or NetBeans. Set a JAVA_HOME environment variable to the directory where JDK is installed.

Download the latest Tomcat binary release from the Apache Project. Note that there are several packages available for download. You should download the ZIP file under the "Core" distribution. After downloading the file, unzip it to a local directory, e.g. c:\apache-tomcat-6.0.x. Also download the PostgreSQL JDBC driver (postgresql-<version_number>.jdbc4.jar) from PostgreSQL.org, and place it under the lib folder of the Tomcat directory, e.g. c:\apache-tomcat-6.0.x\lib.

2. PostgreSQL

Download the binary release of the PostgreSQL 8.3 database server from PostgreSQL.org. There are two packages to choose from: One Click Installer and pgInstaller. I recommend pgInstaller because One-Click Installer does not run on some versions of Windows (e.g. Windows XP SP3). 

After the package is downloaded, unzip it and run SETUP.bat. Follow the installation wizard:

• De-select the Application Stack Builder option
• Select the Development option
• Select UTF8 for Encoding (Server)
• Leave everything else to default

It is recommended that you do not use the PostgreSQL superuser account postgres to perform day-to-day database operations, so create another user and a database with the same name as the user.

3. Eclipse

Download Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers from Eclipse.org. Unzip it to a local directory, e.g. c:\eclipse, then start up Eclipse by double-click on eclipse.exe under the Eclipse folder. If you are using Eclipse for the first time, you will be asked to choose a folder to be Eclipse's workspace. Eclipse will store all your projects in that folder.

After Eclipse is started, install the Subclipse plugin as follows:

• Click Help -> Install New Software...
• Click the Add... button
• Name: Subclipse
• Location: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x
• Select only the required components
• Complete the installation process

You should also install the Logfile Viewer plugin. The update site for the plugin does not seem to work any more, so you need to download it from SourceForge then unzip the content to a local directory, e.g. c:\logfile-viewer. The installation procedure is similar to installing Subclipse, except that

• In the Add... step, click the Local... button then specify the location of the Logfile Viewer folder.
• In the Install window, uncheck Group items by category to see the plugin to be installed.

4. CSNS

The New Project Wizard consists of several steps:

• In Screen 1 (Select a Wizard), select Dynamic Web Project.
• In Screen 2 (Dynamic Web Project), enter csns as the name for the project. You may also need to create a new Target Runtime if you don't already have one.
• In Screen 3 (Web Module), change Content Directory to web, uncheck Generate Deployment Descriptor, then click Finish.

Note that for security reasons, the campus wireless network blocks the port used by Subversion, so if you try to access the repository on campus from your laptop, you have to connect your laptop to the wired network. Networks outside the campus should work just fine.

After the project is checked out, create a PostgreSQL database for CSNS, then use the following two SQL scripts under the db folder of the project to populate the database:

• /db/csns-create.sql will create the database tables, indexes, functions, and triggers.
• /db/csns-test-insert.sql will populate the database with some test data, including a number of student and instructor accounts. The username of each account starts with either "i" (for instructors) or "s" (for students), then followed by four digits, e.g. i0001 or s0002. The account i0000 also has administrator privilege. The password of each account is the same as the username.

Copy build.properties.sample to build.properties, and modify build.properties according to your setup.

Create an Ant Builder for the project by right clicking on the project, then select Properties -> Builders -> New -> Ant Builder. In the Builder Properties window,

• Change the name of the builder from New_Builder to CSNS Ant Builder.
• In the Main tab, specify the build file (Browse Workspace -> click on the project -> select build.xml).
• In the Targets tab, click Set Targets for Auto Build, then click OK (the default target in the build file would be selected).
• Click OK to close the Builder Properties window, then OK again to close the  Project Properties window.

There are two things you need to be careful when creating the Ant builder. First, after setting the target for Auto Build, click the OK button, not the Apply button. Probably due to some bug, clicking the Apply button will undo the target setting instead of applying the setting. Second, after the Ant builder is created, refresh the project by right click on the project then select Refresh. Refreshing the project is important because Ant is an "external tool" to Eclipse, which means that Eclipse is not aware of the changes made by Ant until the project is refreshed.

Finally, right click on the project, then Run As -> Run on Server to run the project. If you can log into CSNS using one of the test accounts, the project is properly set up and you can start working on the code.

Screen Capture Videos

You may want to check out the following screen capture videos that demonstrate the installation processes:

• Tomcat - http://sun.calstatela.edu/~cysun/videos/cs520-tomcat.wmv
• PostgreSQL - http://sun.calstatela.edu/~cysun/videos/postgresql.wmv
• Eclipse - http://sun.calstatela.edu/~cysun/videos/eclipse.wmv
• CSNS - http://sun.calstatela.edu/~cysun/videos/csns.wmv