views:

49

answers:

1

Hi

I have newly joined a company. They have given me the application and asked me to study the workflow. But I dont know wherenthe flow starts and how it goes. Pls someone help me.

The project desc is

My project is doing simple addition and deletion to the database. Its using the technologies Spring,hibernate,EJB and some WSDL files also were there with oracle as backend.

If someone uses the same technology pls help me out.

Thanks in advance.

+1  A: 

A good place to start is by identifying a single path through the application, take the addition of some item to the database.

If you start the application up through Eclipse then set a breakpoint in the Hibernate DAO or domain object that is used for that. Run through a typical user interaction for the additiuon of that item, once you've hit the breakpoint then work backwards (via the call chain) until you reach the user interface. You should by now have identified a complete path through the application and the main components involved. Alternatively, if you know the main user interface component from which that begins (Servlet or otherwise) then you can start from there and step through each method call.

It's important to make notes of the main classes involved in this interaction, either pen and paper or you can document it using UML - use a sequence diagram.

By the way, if you can't start your application through Eclipse then attach a remote debugger to the application server/servlet container that your application runs in.

e.g. For Tomcat see http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/BOOT/Setting+Up+Tomcat+For+Remote+Debugging

That's one method that can be used for understanding the workflow.

Jon
HiThanks for your reply.But since I have been assigned to work in servioce layer there is no servlet or java main. Only I have are EJB,hibernate and spring files and wsdl files. Getting confused now !!
senthilnathan
Then find the unit tests and debug while executing those. Pray, there are unit tests for more important reasons than just giving you a mechanism to execute code.
harschware
Even if there aren't any unit tests, start from the service layer and debug both forward and backwards, both are going to proove beneficial in the long run. If you don't have unit/integration tests around those layers then consider writing some to gain an understanding of the various components.
Jon