It’s difficult for administrators to retrieve information from reports that are generated by different people with different computer platforms, word processors, and interpretations. In this paper, the Faculty Activity Report (FAR) in University of Mississippi is used as a case study to find a way to solve the above problem. We describe the design and implementation of an editing tool aimed at assisting the faculty members of University of Mississippi to generate their FARs. The editing tool, based on the technologies of Java Swing, XML, XSD, and JDOM, have the following characteristics: standardized input procedure, platform independence, and extensibility. We also discuss the future improvements of the editing tool. Keyword: Platform Independence, Extensibility, XML, JDOM, XSD
Tao Zhang, H. Conrad Cunningham, Jian Li