Regis University ePublications at Regis University All Regis University Teses Summer 2005 Development Of A Personal Diet Plan Database Application For Persons With Severe Food Allergies Heather Suzanne Ward Regis University Follow this and additional works at: htps://epublications.regis.edu/theses Part of the Computer Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Ward, Heather Suzanne, "Development Of A Personal Diet Plan Database Application For Persons With Severe Food Allergies" (2005). All Regis University Teses. 772. htps://epublications.regis.edu/theses/772 Tis Tesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by ePublications at Regis University. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Regis University Teses by an authorized administrator of ePublications at Regis University. 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It is available only for research purposes and may not be used in violation of copyright laws or for unlawful purposes. The materials may not be downloaded in whole or in part without permission of the copyright holder or as otherwise authorized in the “fair use” standards of the U.S. copyright laws and regulations. Acknowledgements With thanks to my family for their love and support. Thanks, Dad, for always being there. Mom, thank you for not letting me give up. Thanks, Sissy, for the much needed proof reading and grammar policing. Special thanks to my team of volunteer users for taking the time –I truly could not have done it without you. iii Abstract This project will research, analyze, design, and implement a computerized system that will assist patients in creating a personal diet plan based upon a “rotation diet.” This diet, specifically designed for patients with severe food allergies, requires that a patient may only eat a particular food every n days (where n is any number), and foods from the same biological food family every n days. Currently, patients use either pen-and-paper or a computerized spreadsheet to create weekly or monthly food meal plans for the diet plan. The meal plans are usually transferred by hand to their daily or weekly shopping lists. There are three main problems with the current system. First, many patients complain that in order to make their meal plans simple enough to follow easily, they tend to eat the same foods in the same order each week, so their diets have become very plain and uninteresting. Second, patients frequently make mistakes on their meal plans relating to which foods belong to a given food family, which defeats the purpose of the “rotation” diet plan. Finally, hand transferring the meal plans to shopping lists is time consuming and often inaccurate. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a computerized system that will assist patients to make up a personalized diet plan that allows them to enjoy a broader range of meals, and also to quickly and accurately make up shopping lists for the meals. iv Table of Contents Document Revision History ................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................iii Abstract ............................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................. v List of Tables ....................................................................................................... vi List of Figures...................................................................................................... vi 1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction and Background ...................................................................... 1 1.2 The Rotation Diet ........................................................................................ 1 1.3 Current Process .......................................................................................... 2 1.4 Project Goals .............................................................................................. 4 1.5 Project Scope.............................................................................................. 4 1.5 Project Resources....................................................................................... 4 1.6 Project Timeline .......................................................................................... 5 2 Research ........................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Project Methodology ................................................................................... 6 2.2 Candidate Solutions.................................................................................... 6 2.2.1 Application Implementation Technologies ............................................ 7 2.2.2 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Solutions ....................... 11 2.2.3 Database Solutions ............................................................................ 14 2.2.4 Database Application Web Hosting .................................................... 17 2.3 Winning Solutions ..................................................................................... 19 2.3.1 Application Implementation Technology Solution ............................... 20 2.3.2 Integrated Development Environment Solution .................................. 20 2.3.3 Database Solution .............................................................................. 20 2.3.4 Database Application Web Hosting Solution ...................................... 21 2.4 Methods of Research................................................................................ 21 2.4.1 User Interviews................................................................................... 21 2.4.2 World Wide Web................................................................................. 21 2.5 Summary................................................................................................... 24 3 Project Methodology........................................................................................ 25 3.1 Rapid Application Development ................................................................ 25 3.2 Phases of Rapid Application Development (RAD) .................................... 25 3.2.1 Preliminary Investigation .................................................................... 26 3.2.2 Problem Analysis................................................................................ 26 3.2.3 Iterative Phases.................................................................................. 32 3.2.4 Implementation (final) ......................................................................... 36 3.2.5 Operation and Support ....................................................................... 36 3.3 Summary................................................................................................... 36 4 Project History ................................................................................................. 38 4.1 Beginning the Project ................................................................................ 38 4.2 Managing the Project ................................................................................ 38 4.3 What Went Right....................................................................................... 39 v 4.4 What Went Wrong..................................................................................... 40 4.4.1 Hardware Issues................................................................................. 40 4.4.2 Development Issues ........................................................................... 41 4.4.3 Deployment Issues............................................................................. 42 4.5 Milestones................................................................................................. 43 4.6 Project Summary ...................................................................................... 44 5 Lessons Learned ............................................................................................. 46 5.1 Project Experience.................................................................................... 46 5.2 Expectations ............................................................................................. 46 5.3 Next Evolution........................................................................................... 47 5.4 Conclusions .............................................................................................. 48 5.5 Summary................................................................................................... 48 Bibliography........................................................................................................ 49 Appendices......................................................................................................... 50 Appendix A: User Interview 1 Report .............................................................. 50 Appendix B: Requirements Report.................................................................. 52 Appendix C: Database Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) ............................ 61 Appendix D: Struts Application Specification .................................................. 62 Appendix E: Struts Application Flowchart ....................................................... 77 Appendix F: Final User Interview .................................................................... 82 Appendix G: Use Cases.................................................................................. 84 Appendix H: Glossary ..................................................................................... 86 Appendix I: Views Sample .............................................................................. 88 List of Tables Table 1: Partial Meal Plan Sample ....................................................................... 2 Table 2: Software Publishers.............................................................................. 22 Table 3: Online Stores........................................................................................ 22 Table 4: Academic and Technical Sites.............................................................. 23 Table 5: Web Hosts ............................................................................................ 23 Table 6: Project Milestones ................................................................................ 44 List of Figures Figure 1: Project Timeline..................................................................................... 5 Figure 2: Login Screen ....................................................................................... 88 Figure 3: Create Meal Plans Screen................................................................... 88 Figure 4: Choosing the Meals to be Created for the Meal Plans ........................ 89 Figure 5: Selecting Foods for a Meal.................................................................. 89 Figure 6: View of a Completed Meal Plan .......................................................... 90 Figure 7: Shopping List for the Meal Plan Shown in Figure 6............................. 91 vi 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction and Background This paper will document a project for the development of a personal diet plan database application for persons with severe food allergies. The project proposal was approved in May 2002, and was begun in March 2004. The goals of this project were to research, analyze, design, and implement a database application that would assist patients in creating a personal diet plan based upon a “rotation diet.” This diet, specifically designed for patients with severe food allergies, requires that a patient may only eat a particular food every n days (where n is any number), and foods from the same biological food family every n days. 1.2 The Rotation Diet The “rotation diet” was specifically designed for patients with severe food allergies, and was intended to reduce the chance of these patients developing allergies to foods that are currently safe for them to eat. The most important feature of the rotation diet is the rotation schedule. The rotation schedule requires that a patient may only eat a particular food once every n (where n is any number) days, and may also only eat foods from the same biological food family every n days. This is notated as family rotation /food rotation (4/6, 3/7, or 3/5, etc). For example, with a 3/5 day rotation, if the patient eats broccoli (mustard family) on Monday, they cannot eat broccoli again until Sunday (five days between), but may eat something else from the mustard family, such as cauliflower, on Friday (three days between). As another example, if the patient eats string beans (legume family) on Tuesday, they may eat navy beans on Saturday, but may not eat string beans until Monday. In order to determine which foods belong to which families, patients consult a diet manual containing a list of foods categorized by biological food families. For example, tomatoes are listed under the Nightshade family, cow’s milk is under the Bovine family, and apples are under the Rose family. 1.3 Current Process Currently, patients use either pen-and-paper or a spreadsheet to create daily meal plans for the rotation diet, usually making up one to four weeks worth of meal plans at a time. The meal plans are then transferred by hand from the meal plans to their daily or weekly shopping lists. Below is a sample partial weekly meal plan for a 3/5 day rotation schedule. Table 1: Partial Meal Plan Sample Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Orange Goat’s Bacon, Tea, Coffee, Apricot, Orange Juice, Milk, Buckwheat Banana Chicken Blueberry, Juice, Butter, Salmon Egg, Beet Butter, Wheat Honey Sugar Wheat Toast Dew Toast Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Beef, Catfish, Apple, Broccoli, Cashew, Carrots, Beef, Wheat Okra Pork Cod, Chicken, Goat’s Wheat Bun, Chop, Vinegar Curry Milk Pasta, Cow’s Green Powder, Cheese, Cow’s Milk Beans Jicama Mutton Milk Cheese, Cheese, Tomato, Tomato, Butter Butter 2 Patients select the foods they put on the meal plans from three sources: 1) A list of “safe” foods that do not cause the patient an allergic reaction. 2) Their diet manual 3) Past meal plans, which help patients remember when they last ate a food. There are three main problems with the current system: First, many patients complain that in order to make their meal plans simple enough to follow easily, they tend to eat the same foods in the same order each week. As a result, their diets have become very plain and uninteresting. Second, patients sometimes neglect to consult their diet manual in determining the foods belonging to a particular food family, which often leads to mistakes with the rotation schedule that are severe enough to defeat the purpose of the rotation diet. Finally, hand transferring the meal plans to shopping lists is time consuming and often inaccurate. This inaccuracy can lead to patients eating foods out of rotation because they do not wish to make another trip to the grocery store to buy the food that was actually on their meal plan. Furthermore, most patients that give up on their rotation diet state that the major contributing factor to their failure to stay on the diet was the fact that they simply did not have time to create meal plans properly. 3 1.4 Project Goals The goals of this project were the development of a database application that would 1) assist patients in creating their personal diet plan based upon a rotation diet, 2) allow them to enjoy a broader range of meals, and 3) to quickly and accurately make up shopping lists for the meals. 1.5 Project Scope The scope of the project was determined during informal user interviews, and is based on the project goals. It was determined that the application should: 1) Assist patients in the creation of daily meal plans for their personal diet plan. 2) Allow patients to specify rules and preferences for their diet plan, in particular the rotation schedule (3/5, 4/6, etc) and the foods that they are able to eat. 3) Not allow patients to insert foods into their meal plans that break the rules of their diet plan. 4) Allow patients to easily transfer their meal plans to weekly and/or daily shopping lists. 5) Allow patients to easily print out their meal plans and shopping lists. 6) Save meal plans for future reference. 1.5 Project Resources The primary personnel resource for the project was the student that initiated the project, fulfilling roles as the project manager, systems analyst, 4