In the Groove
I've been in the Groove on adding the start-of-day (SOD) position file editing to the editor web for my server. Java GUIs aren't my favorite thing to code up because of the mastery of the object library to really get it done right. Thankfully, Google is there to help.
UPDATE: One of the problems was getting the columns sized correctly. And when I say 'correctly' I mean sized to fit the data in the column headers and column data. So that if you give it enough horizontal space, you'll be able to see everything without having to resize the columns each time you do something like sort the table by a column. The code turned out to turn off the auto-resizing and then go through each column, getting the renderer and asking it what it's preferred size was. Add those up, tack on a bit of margin and you have it. The code is in BKSimpleTable, if you want to have a look.
The next thing was getting the changes back to the server from the applet. I decided to make a cgi script that simply took the old and the new, and replaced one with the other in the SOD position file. It turns out that it's not that bad - but not really efficient either, as you have to scan the file for the matching line. But that's not horrible as we're not doing hundreds of these a day.
The next hurdle was getting the applet to auto-activate in IE. Turns out, IE requires that you call Javascript in another file in order to get it to work. Basically, make a Javascript function myPrintln(s) and in that simple call document.writeln(s); and as long as this is in another file, it'll work. Then, write out each line with this method. Seems like a waste, and it is, but that's IE compatibility. I do with they'd get on the ball.
In the end, things are looking good for a 1.0 release of the page. I've shown it to the Data Team and they will play with it and see if they can find any problems or additions that they need. I'm hoping that this makes the corporate action processing so easy that it's not a major issue any more.