Challenge Overview
Introduction
Welcome to the Actian Btrieve API Sample App Challenge #1.
Actian is the hybrid data management, integration, and analytics company that enables enterprises to seamlessly manage and connect operational and analytic data for superior performance, insights, and business outcomes. Activate Your Data™ - Learn more about Actian’s products here and follow us on Twitter.
Overview
We want to engage the TopCoder community to build a sample app leveraging the Btrieve1 API. See this link for more details on the Btrieve API.
The following are the detailed requirements for this challenge. Note that this is a first in the series of multiple challenges so it’s a great time to get involved and familiarize yourself with Btrieve API. The challenges will be incremental in nature, so early adopters will have an advantage. The kind of operations we expect to see include operations such as create, insert/update/delete, various searches, use of multi-segmented indexes, and so forth.
Btrieve is a transactional database engine that supports CRUD operations on records stored in indexed sequential access method (ISAM) files. For more information, see the Wikipedia articles for the Architecture of Btrieve and Btrieve, as well as the Zen/PSQL documentation at docs.actian.com. If you have deep technical questions about Btrieve or PSQL, please post in the forums at communities.actian.com. For challenge-related and lighter technical questions, please post in the Topcoder forum for this challenge.
Requirements
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Understand how the Btrieve API works and build a sample app (note: this sample should use the original Btrieve, and not the Btrieve 2 interface).
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Apps can be something as simple as creating one of the modules that form part of a retail type POS system, such as stock-checking, price-checking, POS transaction processing, inventory management, customer loyalty tracking, coupon management/redemption, and so on.
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Preferred programming language for the sample app is C/C++/C#. The target platform for these apps is PSQL/Vx Server for Windows.
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Explain your sample app functionality in a blog post/tutorial, along with supporting sample app starter code and screencast overview.
Deliverables
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Your sample app code
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Detailed stepwise tutorial, including all configuration. Please use screenshots as needed.
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A screencast/video walking through your sample app. Please be as detailed as possible.
Submission/Review
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Submit your zipped sample app, tutorial and screencast.
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The submissions will be scored by the Actian team in its sole discretion. There will be no appeals or appeals responses.
Scorecard
All submissions will be scored on a scale of 1-10 based on the following criteria:
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Quality of use case for sample app
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Quality of implementation for sample app
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Level of details provided in tutorial
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Quality of tutorial and screencast submitted
Additional Terms and Conditions for All Participants
By participating in this competition, you acknowledge and agree to the following:
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You must comply with all applicable laws in submitting a Competition Submission, and you represent that you are authorized to submit the Competition Submission.
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Actian Corporation (“Actian”) is free to use, disclose, distribute or otherwise exploit Residual Knowledge. Residual Knowledge means information that is retained in the unaided memories of Actian’s employees and contractors who have had access to any Competition Submissions submitted by You. An employee’s or contractor’s memory will be considered unaided if the employee or contractor has not intentionally memorized the information for the purpose of retaining and subsequently using or disclosing it.
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If you provide comments, criticism, suggested improvements, test results, answers to questions, and other feedback regarding the function, features, and other characteristics of the Actian products in written or oral form (“Feedback”), you agree that all Feedback is the property of Actian and may be used, reproduced, adapted, modified, distributed, and otherwise exploited by Actian in any manner and for any purpose.
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You are not entitled to any compensation from Actian or any of the benefits which Actian may make available to its employees, and you are not authorized to make any representation, contract, or commitment on behalf of Actian.
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Employees and direct and indirect subcontractors of Actian Corporation and its subsidiaries and other affiliates, and employees and direct and indirect subcontractors of Actian’s partners (including TopCoder and its affiliates) are not eligible to participate in the challenge.
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You may only use data that is open and that can be shared with anyone in the world and which is freely available and to which you have rights to use the data.