A Not So Short Description Of My Undergraduate Projects

Hareesh Nagarajan
Graduate Applicant Fall 2004
SOC87927

Contents
1 ionicChat: An Instant Messenger (IM) protocol 2
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Introducing ionicChat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 The Crux of ionicChat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Graphical Modeling using the Discrete Element Method 4

2.1 Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 Postprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 What is this model all about? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 miASMa: A 2 Pass Macro Assembler 6

4 libmiASMaELF 8

5 Kidwai Clinical Laboratory Management System 10

5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2 What was the earlier system like? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3 E-Poster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.4 Has the system been put to use? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

6 MAELSTROM 11

7 SaveTrees Text Editor 12

7.1 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

8 Time Consistent Database 13

SOC87927 - Hareesh Nagarajan Graduate Applicant Fall 2004

1 ionicChat: An Instant Messenger (IM) protocol

Status: Will be completed by January 2004.
Project Guide: Dr. Sudarsh V. Kailas General Manager - Technology at Siemens Information Systems
Limited
Updates: http://puggy.symonds.net/˜hareesh/ionic-chat/
Implementation: In Linux using sockets.

1.1 Introduction
Chat rooms are special web sites or applications that contain rooms in which you can ‘chat’ with random
surfers or arrange a rendezvous. They provide for networking on the Internet. It could be rooms that
cater to specialized topics such as ‘Linux installation for newbies’ or general rooms that cater to teens such
as ‘Teenchat’. There are different requirements for business networking as opposed to social networking.
Now, when one does enter such chat rooms there is a high probability that the occupants of the chat
room may be talking about issues that have barely any relevance to the topic for which the chat room
has been set up in the first place.
For example: We might have Anita in #linuxnewbies chatting with Rita on a private window on the
wonderful Kashmiri carpets she bought for herself on her trip to India. As we can see, Anita seems to be
talking about things that have barely any relevance to Linux. Now at the same time if Seth, a Kashmiri
carpet aficionado, was desperately foraging the various IRC (Internet Relay Chat), Web Chat-servers
and Internet Messaging Services to find people to recount their recent carpet splurges to him, would not
once think about logging onto #linuxnewbies (running on an obscure IRC server) and expect to start a
conversation with a nondescript Anita on Kashmiri carpets.

1.2 Introducing ionicChat

Firstly, there aren’t any chat rooms in ionicChat. Secondly, when a user logs into the system he specifies
a set of interests which we will call Static Interests. Assuming the system starts as an inchoate state with
no user knowing the other, users perform a query on these static interests, and only then start chatting
with each other.
Assuming Anita and Rita have no idea about each other, they each log into the system having specified
their static interests which are as follows:

Static Interests for Anita: Fishing, Linux installation for newbies, Day care
Static Interests for Rita: Day care, Go-karting, Blink-182

Rita queries the system for the interest ‘Day care’ and voila she gets a hit which links to user Anita.
Anita and Rita then start chatting away.
It is from this point on that ionicChat is different from other IM protocols.

1.3 The Crux of ionicChat

Every message that keeps shuttling across Anita and Rita is broken down into their constituent words
and the relevant words are then stored in a transient database at the server.
For example:

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Rita: Hi Anita, Wow! Your interests include Day Care too

Anita: Yes infact they do.
Rita: I have a naughty 4 year old who needs to be placed in Day Care and
it must be in and around Nariman Point. Do you know of any such place?
Anita: ... ...
... And they chat ...
... ...

Anita: Kashmir is such a beautiful place.

Rita: Really?
Anita: I managed to visit Ladakh earlier this year and bought myself
2 stunning Kashmiri carpets.
Rita: Nifty! I’ve heard they are really pretty.
Anita: ... ...
... And they chat ...
... ...

Two assumptions are made here:

1. The users are well aware that their chat is being overheard by our friendly ionicChat Server.
2. There exists an intelligent filter at the client end that identifies ‘important’ words also known as
Buzz words and subsequently sends them to the server.

So now the ionicChat server is aware of two things:

Firstly, two of its users (Anita and Rita) are chatting away to glory.
Secondly, the buzz words that are floating around in their chat are:

Anita, include, Day, Care, naughty, Nariman, Point, ...

Ladakh, Nifty, stunning, Kashmiri, carpets, heard, pretty, ...

So using this simplistic mechanism the server maintains a state of every users chat content.
Our affable Seth now logs into the system with his static interests setup as follows:

Static Interests for Seth: Rush, Tom Sawyer, Psychedelic Carpets

Now Seth queries the system for Kashmiri Carpets. The server then searches its transient database to
discover that users Anita and Rita are currently involved in a chat in which the buzz words ‘Kashmiri’
and ‘Carpets’ were uttered sometime in the recent past in the chat involving Anita and Rita. Seth then
requests Anita and Rita to let him join their chat, or otherwise he makes formal requests to add the two
onto his friend list.
Thus Seth is left a happy man, having discovered a lady somewhere in cyberspace who can satiate his
information for carpets.

1.4 Conclusion
The primary design of ionicChat has been established and around fifty percent of the implementation
using the Qt library has be done. Only time will tell if it can achieve the goals it initially set out to
address.

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2 Graphical Modeling using the Discrete Element Method

Status: Will be completed by January 2004.
Project Guide: Dr. T.J. Sitharam, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science
Updates: http://puggy.symonds.net/˜hareesh/iisc-civil/
Implementation: In Java using 2-Dimensional drawing primitives.
In this project my task is to develop 3-Dimensional models for particles whose specification have been
given by TRUBAL (A discrete element modeling program). I am writing programs that take care of the
preprocessing and postprocessing activities.

2.1 Preprocessing
The preprocessing activity is involved with providing an interface to allow the user to specify the number
of particles, the orientation of the particles, the kind of model that needs to be generated etc.

2.2 Postprocessing
The postprocessing activity is involved with the actual plot. Here the user is provided with various
facilities to manipulate the model generated on the screen.

2.3 What is this model all about?

We have around 10,000 particles placed inside a parellopiped which can be rotated about 2 planes. The
specifications for the particles are read from a large data file generated by TRUBAL. My program (for
this particular model) reads the file, applies the necessary transformations for the entire system, sorts
the particles such that the ones deepest inside are drawn first and then generates a post script of the
resulting model.

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Figure 1: Sample particle model as a postscript

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SOC87927 - Hareesh Nagarajan Graduate Applicant Fall 2004

Figure 2: miASMa Block Diagram

3 miASMa: A 2 Pass Macro Assembler

Is a 2 Pass Macro Assembler that generates object files conforming to the ELF Object File Format.
WEB: http://freshmeat.net/projects/miasma
Operating System: Can be compiled on most LINUX distributions with g++ 2.9x Only

usage: miasma infile [-c outfile | -o outfile] [-v] [-r]

[-e outfile] [-s]
or miasma --version for version information
or miasma -h to view help

-c Creates outfile which is a Relocatable Object File that

conforms to ELF specification. (Basically the .o file)
-o Creates an executable outfile. miasma internally invokes ld
-v verbose output for every instruction that has been assembled
-r Retain intermediate .mac file. This file is the source file
with the macro’s (if present) expanded.
Default action is to delete this file
-e Redirect Error to file
-s Redirect Error to stdout. This is the default action

$cat ncr.asm -- n!/(r!*(n-r)! A combination program written for miASMa

MACRO SYSCALL A B C D
MOV AX,A;Syscall number
MOV BX,B;File descriptor
MOV ECX,C;32 bit relocation address
MOV DX,D;No of bytes
INT 80H;Interrupt
ENDM
SEGMENT .DATA
N DB 06H
R DB 04H
RES DB 00H
RESA DB 00H,0AH,0DH
TXT DB ’NCR - ’
SEGMENT .TEXT
MOV AL,[N]
MOV BL,[R]
CALL NCR
MOV AL,[RES]

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Figure 3: A limited comparison: miASMa v/s NASM

AAM
ADD AX,3030H
MOV [RES],AH
MOV [RESA],AL
SYSCALL 4 1 TXT 6
SYSCALL 4 1 RES 4
MOV AX,1
MOV BX,0
INT 80H
NCR:
CMP AL,BL
JE INCA
CMP BL,0
JE INCA
CMP BL,1
JE ADDN
PUSH AX
DEC AL
CMP AL,BL
POP AX
JE ADDN
DEC AL
PUSH AX
PUSH BX
CALL NCR
POP BX
POP AX
DEC BL
PUSH AX
PUSH BX
CALL NCR
POP BX
POP AX
RET
INCA:
INC BYTE[RES]
RET
ADDN:
ADD [RES],AL
RET
$miasma ncr.asm -c < -- Assemble Now! with miASMa
$ld ncr.o -o ncr
$./ncr
NCR - 15
$

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Figure 4: The memory map of the hello.o file written by libmiASMa byte-by-byte

4 libmiASMaELF
This simple library can be used to write relocatable object files conforming to the ELF Format.
Let us have a look at a sample C++ program which makes use of the libmiASMaELF library to write
an object file (hello.o) which on linking will print Hello, World! onto the standard output.
simple Hello, World! program written using libmiASMaELF.
WEB: http://freshmeat.net/projects/libmiasmaelf
Operating System: Can be compiled on most LINUX distributions with g++ 2.9x Only

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include "libmiasmaelf.h"

int main(void )
{
char text[] = {
’\xB8’, ’\x04’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, // mov eax, 4

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’\xBB’, ’\x01’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, // mov ebx, 1

’\xB9’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, // mov ecx, msg
’\xBA’, ’\x0E’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, // mov edx, 14
’\xCD’, ’\x80’, // int 0x80
’\xB8’, ’\x01’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, ’\x00’, // mov eax, 1
’\xCD’, ’\x80’ // int 0x80
};

char data[] = {
’\x48’, ’\x65’, ’\x6C’, ’\x6C’, ’\x6F’, // Hello, World! written in Hexadecimal
’\x2C’, ’\x20’, ’\x57’, ’\x6F’, ’\x72’,
’\x6C’, ’\x64’, ’\x21’, ’\x0A’
};

vector<char> vtext(&text[0], &text[29]);

vector<char> vdata(&data[0], &data[14]);
miasmaELF obj;

obj.InitializeELFHeader();
obj.InitializeSymbolTable();

obj.AddNewSection(".shstrtab",SHT_STRTAB, 0,0,0,0,0,0);
obj.AddNewSection(".text", SHT_PROGBITS,6,0,0,0,16,0);
obj.AddNewSection(".data", SHT_PROGBITS,3,0,0,0,16,0);
obj.AddNewSection(".symtab", SHT_SYMTAB, 0,0, obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_STRTAB, ".strtab"),
0, 4,sizeof(Elf32_Sym));

obj.AddNewSection(".rel.text",SHT_REL,0,0, obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_SYMTAB),
obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_PROGBITS, ".text"),
4,sizeof(Elf32_Rel));

obj.AddContents(vtext, obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_PROGBITS,".text"));
obj.AddContents(vdata, obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_PROGBITS,".data"));

obj.AddSymbol("_start",0,0, STB_WEAK, STT_FUNC,

obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_PROGBITS, ".text"));
obj.AddSymbol("msg",0,0, STB_GLOBAL, STT_OBJECT,
obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_PROGBITS, ".data"));

obj.AddRelocationEntry(11, obj.ReturnSymbolIndex("msg"),
R_386_RELATIVE,
obj.GetSectionIndexOfType(SHT_REL, ".rel.text"));

obj.PrepareFile();
obj.WriteFile("hello.o"); //Yippie! libmiASMaELF has created hello.o
}

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5 Kidwai Clinical Laboratory Management System

WEB: http://www.gnu.org/directory/Business and Productivity/special/kidwai.html
Operating System: Windows.
Software: Apache, MySQL, PHP
Screen Shots: A number of them are posted on this link http://puggy.symonds.net/˜hareesh/kidwai/

5.1 Introduction
This system is one of the first of its kind in India to be built using open source components to automate a
single, yet critical component of a Hospital’s existing (non-computerized) system. KCLMS was developed
for the Kidwai Institute of Oncology (the largest federal Cancer Hospital in India) to automate the entire
process of a patient’s laboratory-test requisition details.
That means, right from the registration of a patient for a specific test, upto a doctor viewing the patients
test results from her terminal. The entire chain of Patients, Receptionists, Central Lab Registration
Technicians, Individual Laboratory Technicians, Doctors and System Administrators are assigned roles
and have been made active entities in the system. The schema was built by mapping an ER Diagram
to a schema. A number of deficiencies encountered with MySQL have been documented (namely lack
of composite foreign keys). Finally, KCLMS can be used as a prototype to develop a similar Patient-
LabTest-Registration system that is highly robust, secure and based on rigorous normalization principles.

5.2 What was the earlier system like?

The earlier manual system imposed upon the patient to physically report at the various individual labo-
ratories to register for tests as prescribed by the consulting doctor. The laboratory staff at the specified
laboratory would then perform the test immediately after the registration or at a point later in time.
There were occurrences of inconsistencies cropping up in the patient data across laboratories because of
the lack of a centralized repository. Typically, once the results of the tests were obtained the manually
written test reports were forwarded to the concerned Doctor’s office. This meant the system did not
provide a mechanism for a doctor to query on the status of a test at any point in between. It also did not
provide a facility to evaluate the efficiency of a laboratory on the basis of the number of pending tests.

5.3 E-Poster
To read more on the e-poster that was selected at the 8th Advancing Practice, Instruction & Innovation
through Informatics conference organized by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center visit
http://apiii.upmc.edu/abstracts/posterarchive/2003/nagarajan.html

5.4 Has the system been put to use?

Yes it has! The results have been documented in the eposter above.

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Figure 5: MAELSTROM’s Design

Figure 6: MAELSTROM’s Features

6 MAELSTROM
Is a 2-Dimensional Vector Graphics package written in Turbo C++.
WEB: http://puggy.symonds.net/˜hareesh/maelstrom
Operating System: Can be compiled only with the horrible Turbo C++ compiler on DOS.

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Figure 7: SaveTrees Text Editor - Class Hierarchy

Figure 8: SaveTrees Text Editor - Screen Shot

7 SaveTrees Text Editor

Is a full screen, real time text editor written using the NCURSES library. It is written entirely in C++
with roughly 2800 lines of code. Figure 7 shows the editor’s class hierarchy. The services of the Standard
Template Library have been used extensively. Multiple editing windows were provided by creating a
vector of pointers to objects of Class ‘Type’. The editor also supports the usual editing operations such
as cut, copy, paste.
WEB: http://freshmeat.net/savetrees
Operating System: Can be compiled on most LINUX distributions with g++ 2.9x Only.

7.1 Limitations
• One cannot perform EDIT operations across files. This was because of lack of foresight on my part
while designing the Class ‘BlockEdit’.
• The real TAB has not been implemented.

• SaveTrees is extremely phlegmatic when a really large file opened.

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Figure 9: Design of the Time consistent Database

8 Time Consistent Database

I designed and wrote a Time Consistent Database, a module used in Remote Telemetry Units at the
Center for the Development of Advanced Computing, Bangalore (C-DAC) on the QNX RTOS. For a
comprehensive treatment of the system visit the link below.
WEB: http://puggy.symonds.net/˜hareesh/cdac/cdac-paper.pdf
Operating System: QNX RTOS. Snippets of the source are reproduced in the documentation.

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