Still no final answer from my employers about the resources I've asked for. I'm a bit disappointed by that, but still hopeful I'll get what I want. It's hard to see how they could reasonably object - but then, I've been disappointed before.
On the positive side, my literature review is coming along fairly well, I think. I'm up to 3,350 words anyway 
I've also moved a little way along the path of defining the nature of the application I want to develop. It's actually fairly clear in my mind what I want to do, but without the go-ahead from work, I'm reluctant to move too far. What I am pretty sure about is that the application will ask testers to input some student data, and perhaps update it and maybe also delete it.
There's a specification called IMS Enterprise that defines in XML format the data required concerning students in an e-Learning context. I've downloaded the specification and also some XML tools for Eclipse that should make it easier for me to work with it. With luck, one of the things that I'll be able to do is to generate some student data in an XML file which I can upload programmatically using both MS .NET and Mono. The comparison between the two in a batch-processing environment should illuminate that work I do in the interactive environment. It may be that performance between the two is pretty similar in an interactive environment, but more favourable to MS .NET in a batch environment. This is what I'm expecting, anyway.
Ah well. Back to the literature review.
No Comments/Trackbacks for this post yet...