Update (1/8): Object Model Updates, SQL+JSON+Java Object+QObject, Storage

An important part of any software project involves translating information from a real-world domain to digital information in the artificial system. We have asked ourselves important questions, including: what do we need to represent? how much information do we need to represent students, attendance logs, and classes? In the Onion architecture, this information belongs in the object model I worked on developing the object model with Nico. Here is a draft of our work (objects are indicated using `*`, each object has a list of property names and types):

* course
- course id (short String like 'CSE 101', unique)
- course name (long String)
- instructor name (long String)
- location (long String)
- readable time (long String)

* users
- research id (long String, unique)
- password (long String)

* student-course junction table

* attendance log
- log id (int, unique)
- received time (timestamp)
- sent time (timestamp)
- auth key (long String)
- auth type (short String)
- auth status (ok, late, absent)
- device id (long String)

foreign keys
- attendance id (int, from the attendance session table)
- research ID (long String, from the users table)

* attendance session
- attendance id (int, unique)
- authtype (short String)
- authkey (long String)
- course id (short String)
- start time (timestamp)
- end time (timestamp)

Now we need to represent the model in code.  The data on the server must be stored in a SQL database, converted to Java Object using `sormula`, and converted to JSON using Google's `gson` library so that it may be sent from server to client Once this data arrives at the client, it should be translated to a QJsonDocument and then  into a QObject. This QObject can be easily consumed by the GUI, which is written in the QML language.

An important future goal is extensibility. We will make frequent changes to our data model as the experiment progresses. We need to translate our model to repetitive code across several platforms while maintaining consistent names and relationships. Ideally, we would have one source-code for both the client and the server. Instead, we're using JSON objects, Qt objects (defined using C++), and Java objects to store and transmit information. To help keep the data objects consistent across platforms, we are working on a script that generates (1) a SQL create script, (2)Qt Object and JSON conversion code in C++, and (1) Java object declarations in order to keep names and types consistent and easy to update.