TippyCal

: A Web-Based Airplane Weight and

Balan e Cal ulator

Mark J. Boyd

Ja k Baskin S hool of Engineering

University of California

Santa Cruz, CA 95064

fmjboydg se.u s .edu

Abstra t
This paper des ribes TippyCal , an airplane weight and balan e al-
ulator implemented as a Java applet for use through the internet. The
design uses lasses and inheritan e to manage data stru tures, onstru tor
overloading to implement two dierent fun tions, and a GUI interfa e to
elegantly manage input and display results. TippyCal a epts input from
the user about loading of the airplane and determines if the loaded air-
plane is airworthy. The program urrently implements a single make and
model, the Cessna 172M, but the base data is easily modied to generate
results for any general aviation airplane.

1 Introdu tion
Obje t-oriented programming (OOP) for web based ele troni ommer e appli-
ations is an in reasingly important area of omputer s ien e [3{5℄. Java (and
its OOP stru ture) is widely used in e-business, business ondu ted through the
internet. Java's popularity in this area is due to its extensive libraries, rapid
Graphi User Interfa e (GUI) development, easy network interfa es, platform
independen e, and support for internet browser environments.
This paper des ribes TippyCal 1 , a web-based obje t-oriented system de-
sign, written as a Java applet. TippyCal provides weight and balan e informa-
tion about a general aviation airplane, given information from the user about
how the airplane is loaded. This ve week proje t required an understanding of
the fundamental problem of airplane loading, as well as OOP design and testing
to ensure orre t implementation.
1 http://www. se.u s .edu/~mjboyd/java/wb/index.html

1
 Se tion 2 reviews ne essary denitions. Se tion 3 presents an outline of
TippyCal and its signi ant omponents, and Se tion 4 presents an analysis
of the system design. Se tion 5 presents test results, Se tion 6 dis usses future
extensions, and Se tion 7 on ludes the paper.

2 Denitions
2.1 OOP

Obje t-Oriented Programming (OOP) is organized around obje ts rather than

a tions, data rather than logi . OOP takes the view that the fo us should
be on the obje ts we want to manipulate rather than the methods used to
manipulate them. Examples of obje ts range from human beings (des ribed by
name, address, and so forth) to buildings and oors (whose properties an be
des ribed and managed) down to the little widgets on your omputer desktop
(su h as buttons and s roll bars). [1℄
Classes des ribe a generalized lass of obje ts, dening the data ontained
and any logi al sequen es that an manipulate the data. These manipulations
are alled methods [8℄.
2.2 Java

Java is an obje t-oriented language without all of the omplexity of C++. Fea-
tures like strong typing, ex ellent ompiler error he king, platform indepen-
den e, and automati garbage olle tion support rapid appli ation development
[2, 6℄. One disadvantage of Java, in general, is an order of magnitude slower
ode exe ution.
2.3 Applet

A small appli ation, usually downloaded from a web page link, whi h exe utes on
the lient omputer. Applets s ale well be ause they use distributed exe ution,
rather than sharing time exe uting operations on a entralized server.

3 TippyCal Design
The ar hite ture of the system is a three-tier design, originally proposed by
Tsi hiritzis and Klug [7℄. The three tiers are: (1) the user interfa e (UI) om-
muni ating with (2) a al ualtion program whi h ommuni ates with (3) the
databases and data sour es. The advantage of this design is that it frees the
UI to on entrate on the user rather than the physi al lo ation and stru ture of
the data. Thus we an later hange appli ations or database stru ture without

2
 WBcalcApplet LoadedPlane EmptyPlane

input_emptyplanemoment inlimits emptyplanemoment

input_emptyplaneweight1 grossweight emptyplaneweight
input_front maxmoment maxgrossweight
input_rear minmoment maxmomentfactor
input_baggage11 loadedplanemoment minmomentfactor
input_baggage22 centerofgravity minmomentadjestment
input_fuel frontseatsfactor
output rearseatsfactor
output_grossweight fuelfactor
output_moment baggage11factor
output_cg baggage22factor
baggage11maxweight
baggage22maxweight

1
TransferFocus

actionPerformed()

Figure 1: TippyCal Design

breaking other parts of the design or existing appli ations. Figure 1 shows the
design pattern.
The UI tier ontains a TippyCal GUI and a TransferFo us lass (subse tion
3.1). The GUI is implemented as a web page whi h ontains a Java applet. The
Java applet handles the user interfa e for user input and display of the results.
Any hanges made by the user are kept in the elds for the next al ulation.
The design of the al ulation tier and LoadedPlane lass (subse tion 3.2)
was adapted from a design pattern by Martin Fowler [3℄. This tier presents a
simplied interfa e to the UI tier.
The database tier onsists of the EmptyPlane obje t (subse tion 3.3). The
obje t ontains data about an unloaded airplane's hara teristi s. The obje t
urrently uses default data for a Cessna 172M, but the use of onstru tor over-
loading allows this obje t to be lled with data from a database of dierent
types of airplanes.
3.1 GUI

The GUI (Graphi al User Interfa e) for the portfolio manager is implemented
in the WB al Applet lass. This lass a epts data from the user and presents
results.
The WB al Applet lass extends Applet, thus inheriting all of the fun tion-
ality of the Applet lass. WB al Applet also implements A tionListener, whi h
WB al Applet uses in addition to the TransferFo us lass to respond to GUI
events to update the s reen. In this manner, the GUI uses the advantages of
inheritan e and en apsulation espoused in OOP and OOD. The Button lass

3
was developed with the Model-View-Controller design pattern in mind and as
a result the WB al Applet lass implements this design pattern [4℄.
The TransferFo us lass neatly manages the transfer of attention from one
input eld to the other. This lass is arefully designed to naturally ow through
the elds most likely to have modied data, while ignoring the data elds least
likely to be hanged. The empty moment and empty weight elds an be
hanged, but these are never brought to fo us automati ally, sin e they are
least likely to hange.

Obje t TippyCal Lower Bound

WB al Applet O(u) (u)
LoadedPlane O( u) (u)
EmptyPlane O(u) (u)

Table 1: S alability Analysis for Various Components ( = al ulations performed

per user, u=users)

3.2 LoadedPlane Class

This lass unites the input from the user with the EmptyPlane data to determine
the airworthiness of the loaded airplane, or to determine the maximum amount
of fuel able to be loaded. Table 1 shows that this lass does a re al ulation ea h
time the input is hanged.
3.3 EmptyPlane Class

This lass has the base data for a parti ular type of empty airplane. For any
plane of the same type, the empty weight and moment may be dierent (as
semi-permanent removals of avioni s or a essories may ause some hanges),
but the ee ts of loading the seats or fuel remain standard. The onstru tor
may easily be overloaded to allow passing of these parameters from a database
or ookie.

4 Design De isions
Several important de isions ae ted the design.
4.1 Applet vs. Servlet

Table 2 shows the development time for the proje t. One reason for implement-
ing an applet was to avoid unreliable server performan e and omplex imple-
4
mentation. As implemented, the applet exe utes instantaneously when values
are hanged, requiring no intera tion with the server. One drawba k was the
test error found on some browsers whi h does not orre tly release memory ba k
to the lient omputer when the program terminates.
4.2 Grid GUI

The grid layout was used to produ e a olumn of results, rather than any more
sophisti ated GUI. This works well to produ e a simple-to-understand GUI
whi h is less sus eptible to errati hanges when the browser window size is
altered.
4.3 Default Data

Default data is initiated in the input elds to redu e the data entry required by
the user. The program assumes the plane is fairly heavily loaded sin e a user
wouldn't be using the program generally to solve easy problems with minimal
loading. The program an be improved by saving the last entered data in a
ookie and keeping it as the default data for the next time the program is
started.

5 Test Results and Development Time

Tests showed that TippyCal performs as expe ted during normal operation.
De ien ies in the demonstration version in luded GUI resizing problems, fo us
not working, and poor garbage olle tion. In the GUI, on dierent platforms,
some of the elds were too small to view the inputs. This was orre ted by
in reasing the eld size. Also on dierent platforms, the fo us did not initialize
to the "fuel eld". Finally, when the browser is losed, sometimes a memory
ex eption is noted by the Windows operating system. This is most likely due to
failure of the Java applet to properly free the reated obje ts when the browser
is terminated.

6 Future Work
The system an be improved by adding a database for dierent air raft whi h
an be sele ted by the user. Another improvement would be to keep the empty
plane moment and weight data, as well as default loading data, in a ookie so
that the program uses this data for future problems when the orresponding tail
number is entered.

5
 Task WB al Applet TransferFo us LoadedPlane EmptyPlane
design 8 2 8 2
ode/test 5 1 8 4
integrate 1 1 1 1
report 3 1 2 1
present 1 1 1 1
totals 18 6 20 9

Table 2: Hours Required

7 Con lusion
TippyCal implements a web-based airplane weight and balan e al ulator for
general aviation airplanes. Sin e it is an obje t-oriented Java design, it uses fea-
tures of inheritan e and overloading to minimize development time. The design
is easily extensible to use hara teristi s of other airplanes, mainly due to the
logi al obje t-oriented nature of the problem. TippyCal is a very good demon-
stration of the benets of Java and OOP applied to web-based appli ations.
Referen es
[1℄ Timothy Budd. An Introdu tion to Obje t Oriented Programming (2nd Edition). Addison
Wesley, Reading, MA, 1997.

[2℄ David Flanagan. Java in a Nutshell (2nd Ed.). O'Reilly and Asso iates, In ., 101 Morris
Street, Sebastapol, CA 95472, USA, 1997.

[3℄ Martin Fowler. Analysis Patterns: Reusable Obje t Models. Addison Wesley, Reading,
MA, 1997.

[4℄ Cay S. Horstmann and Gary Cornell. Core Java 2. Prenti e-Hall, Upper Saddle River,
NJ, 1999.

[5℄ Cary A. Jardin. Java Ele troni Commer e Sour ebook : All the Software and Expert
Advi e You Need to Open Your Own Virtual Store. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY,
1997.

[6℄ Ira Pohl and Charlie M Dowell. Java by Disse tion: The Essentials of Java Programming.
Addison Wesley, Reading, MA, 2000.

[7℄ Dennis Tis hritzis and Anthony Klug. The ANSI/X3/SPARC DBMS framework report
of the study group on database management. In Information Systems, number 3, pages
173{191, 1979.

[8℄ C. Thomas Wu. An Introdu tion to Obje t Oriented Programming With Java. M Graw-
Hill College Division, New York, NY, 1998.