Hello Paul,
I also downloaded my assignment about three weeks ago. Before that, I had purchased Max's book and had gone through it once (since then, I have gone through the threading and RMI chapters twice).
Like you, I was having trouble getting-off the block. I am doing more or less what Andrew is suggesting to you, i.e., work inside out. I first wrote a
test program to read the datafile data correctly. You can see my threads related to it on this forum (do a search on my name "Bharat"). Once you have figured out how to read data from the datafile, you can begin to implement the data.java class with the given interface methods (I think it varies based on the versions of URLyBird. My interface is called DBMain.java while others have it as DBAccess.java. Anyway, that is the approach I am taking. I am at a point now where I am beginning to think about the RMI issues as well.
Hope this helps.
Regards.
Bharat
SCJP,SCJD,SCWCD,SCBCD,SCDJWS,SCEA
