This week I was able to start the bulk of my tests of the APIs and their performance on both the west and eastern coast servers by running the scripts every 12 hours. I have also started working on my final paper so that I will be finished in time for my deadline.
Journal
Week of 7/17/17
This week was another productive one as usual. I was able find a way to run my scripts on the west coast using a server using Amazon Web Services(AWS). This enables me to test and examine the availability and performance of the APIs in the West to compare them to the availability and performance in the East. I have also finished the python script to run the performance scripts for each API.
Week of 7/10/17
This week was another productive one. I was able to finish all of the timing scripts for the APIs and test them to make sure they work properly. I was also able to start on researching the privacy and security of each API. I then put my findings into a list of unsecured and secure APIs. For now, that is all for the security and privacy side of my research. As far the performance and availability side of my research, I will be developing a script to run each performance script for a week and then I will be able to analyze the data that comes from that. I will also begin researching a way for me to run the scripts on a server in a different location so that I can test the APIs availability in a different location.
Week of 7/3/17
TThis week wasn’t as productive as others have been. Since it was the week of Fourth of July there were many festivities during the week. During the week I was able to complete the performance timing scripts for the the Slack API. I was able to attend the weekly research talks done by the Computer Science department but I was unable to meet with my professor of attend the reading meeting run by him because I missed the bus that takes me to campus and I was unable to find a parking spot anywhere in walking distance to campus. Instead I did my work at a local starbucks for the day. On the Fourth of July the host that I am staying with took me and a couple of her friends downtown to celebrate and have fun. This was a very enjoyable experience for me because I haven’t taken a lot of my time to have fun this summer. I look forward to enjoying my final month of this research program.
Week of 6/26/17
This week I was able start on connecting with the Slack, Google Maps and IBM Watson APIs. So far I have only been able to complete the timing scripts for the Google Maps API and I am still researching how to change the server used to process my API calls in order to see if the location affects the performance of the calls. So far the Google Maps API has been the simplest to use as far as connecting to it. The API allows you to enable certain functions and gives one key that will work whether or not you change the methods you would like to use. The slack API has been one of the hardest to connect though. The APIs documentation is not clear on how to get a correct API key and had different keys for different reasons. I had to scour the Internet to find the correct solution. Once I found it I had trouble using some of the calls correctly. By next week I should have the completed the script for the slack API. Also I have learned a lot through my mentor’s weekly reading group meetings.
Week of 6/19/17
This week was productive as well. I was able to successfully connect to the Facebook and Twitter APIs, and I was able to finish the python scripts to time the performance of Twitter and Facebook APIs. I used the same strategy as I did with the Dropbox API calls by taking the average time of each call for 100 times run. The main problem I have had has been trying to connect to the APIs since each one has its own methods of authentication and testing tokens and figuring out each I also had to go home on Friday in order to attend my grandmother’s funeral back in Huntsville. This made me lose a day of productivity but I was glad to be able to spend time with my family though under unfortunate circumstances. I am also expanding my knowledge in different areas of research through the weekly research seminars and discussions led by my mentor.
Week of 6/12/17
This week was another productive one. I was able to start writing python scripts to connect to different API such as Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter. By the end of the week I was able to successfully connect to the Dropbox API using a python script and make calls to the API to do certain actions such as adding and deleting files. I took the average time it took to successfully make a call to the api by taking the the time it took to make a certain call 100 times and then dividing it by 100. Next week I will be doing the same with the Twitter and Facebook APIs and then move to others. I am also researching a way to change the server used to process my API calls in order to see if the location affects the performance of it. Which is one of the goals of the research and to examine security as well. The reading sessions that my mentor has been facilitating have been going well also and I have learned a lot from the them and the weekly seminars that the computer science department has been having on Wednesdays.
Week of 6/5/17
This week was very productive for me. I was able to finish reading the set of readings and summarize the papers. I was then able to start trying to get a set of scripts from one the papers to run. By the end of the week, I was able to get the data from one of the files. The next step was to create a graph from the data collected with the file using a javascript file included from the paper. While trying to create the graphs I ran into some problems. One of these problems was that the files located in the zip folder were not named the same as they were in the readme file. This caused confusion when I tried to find the right files. Another problem occurred when I found the right file to create the graphs but I received an error concerning the input file that could not be resolved by me nor my professor so I was put in contact with one of the authors of the paper to resolve the issue. Also this week I was able to attend a seminar done every week by the computer science department, and I was also able to attend the reading group session hosted by my mentor for the first time. It was great to learn more about the different research projects being done on Duke’s campus. Overall, the experience on Duke’s campus has been very eye-opening and exciting so far.
Week of 5/29/2017
This week I was tasked to finish up on my summaries of the readings to gain a better understanding of what I would be researching for the summer. Once I finished those, I was given scripts by my mentor from a paper that had done a summary on and told to try and get them to run. This became a challenge for me as I am not familiar with JavaScript of Python scripts. Since this was a problem my mentor agreed to get me some help with running them next week. Also, my mentor has started a summer reading club with me and the other graduate students working with him currently. I wasn’t able to come to the first meeting because of an illness that I had but I will be able to make it to the other ones in the future. My current work is being done inside an office across from my mentor’s that is shown below.
Week of 5/22/17
This week I was able to move into the place I will be staying for the rest of my time here at Duke University. So far my experience here has been eye-opening and very enjoyable. Dr. Benson described the project I would be working on and then gave me readings that would help me gain a better understanding of the topics I would need to know in order to complete the project and gave me the task of summarizing them.
