Betty

Betty

Betty is an open source, versatile and configurable betting Web site, that you can install in your own network. It enables you to make friendly bets / forecasts between colleagues or between friends. It does not promote in any way betting for money: in turn, there is no provision for such bets in the server.

Features
License
Download
Documentation
Quick start
Limitations
History
Other solutions
What's coming next?
Third-party tools and libraries
Acknowledgements

Features

The server is rather quite configurable and flexible; it has been designed to handle different types of championships, like football (soccer), rugby, golf, cars (formula one for example), and so on. You will find live examples in the project distribution.
Here follows a list of the major project features:

Multiple concurrent championships are possible, while the user base remains the same.
Configurable bet model (an ordered sub-list of a list of players, the scores of a confrontation, the winner of a confrontation); other models may be added through Java plug-ins.
Fully accessible and language-neutral interfaces through simple HTTP+XML remote requests: you can make your own user interface from the API set, for example in Java, .NET, JavaScript+HTML, PHP, ASP, etc.
Adobe Flash Web client as built-in user interface, essentially for betters.
GWT (Google Web Toolkit, HTML+JavaScript) Web client as built-in user interface for administrators.
RSS 2.0 feeds including latest updates and additions, targeted for betters or administrators (English only).
Easy-to-use installation wizard on Windows platforms.
Support for different languages (at the time of writing, English and French translations are available).
Multiple time zones can be mixed: this is in particular useful for defining worldwide championships.
Server installation on a Windows or a Linux platform as a service, in order to make the server available most of the time.
A project documentation as complete as possible (although there is still work to be done, I know. And time shall be spent to read it, also).

Here is a view of the Flash user interface (click on image to enlarge it):

And you will find below a rather high-level description of the project environment (click on image to enlarge it):

License

Betty is licensed through a BSD-like licensing model: see the text here.

Download

On SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=227046.
The latest XML configuration files are located here (please refer to the project documentation for more information).

Documentation

The project documentation Web page is located here.

Quick start

A 2-step installation guide of the Betty project on a Windows platform, in order to play as quickly as possible with the bet server. For an installation on a *nix distribution, for a more complete guide (even on a Windows machine), or for installation troubleshooting, please refer to the Betty documentation.

Download and install the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads)
Download and install the Betty project from the Windows installation wizard: Betty-x.y.z-x86-32.exe

The password of the default administrator ('root') is 'changeit'. This point is further described in the main project documentation, section "Users".
That's all? Yes, unless you want to bet on a championship not provided in the binary distribution, or if the provided championships aren't up-to-date. You may find updates or other “real” examples here, and you can make one of your own (please refer to the Betty documentation).

Limitations

The Betty Web application has not been specifically designed to be hosted on the open Internet; it is targeted to private networks (LANs)
The language modification in the Flash client does not propagate quite well, in particular to the tree labels and to the combo-box widths. Workaround (for trees): open or close any tree item
The RSS feeds are only available in the English language

Don't forget to use the SourceForge Web site to submit bugs or enhancement suggestions (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=227046).

History

You may find the project version history here.
This project started mid-2004, has slept for almost 4 years, until I reanimated it in 2008 for the final (?) touch. It was born essentially for 3 reasons:

Study Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) through a relatively simple but realistic case; the only way to do it at that time was for me to start a personal project, at home.
Of course use this Web site to make sport forecasts in my office with my workmates.
And finally I wanted to give back a contribution to the Open Source community, that has brought me (and still continues to bring me) great softwares, efficient tools, and more generally better solutions than in the commercial world.

The main technologies involved in this project are the following:

Java EE Entity Beans (EJB 2) and servlets, running thanks to the JBoss Application Server (including its embedded HSQL database)
Adobe Flex (Adobe Flash XML + ActionScript 3 toolkit)
Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a framework to build HTML+JavaScript Web pages from Java classes
Castor (http://www.castor.org/), a Java ↔ XML binding framework
Apache Ant
Xdoclet 1
Java Service Wrapper
Inno Setup
RSS, XML

Please refer to “Third-party tools and libraries” for more details and credits.

What's coming next?

I optionally plan the following actions in the future:

A live “demo” server on the Internet;
Integration with external authentication methods (user directory, NTLM, etc.);

If you think one of these should be of particular interest to you, or if you would enjoy another feature not listed here, please make your suggestion on the appropriate SourceForge tracker: Feature requests.

Third-party tools and libraries

The next table describes all 3d-party tools and libraries used at run-time in a binary form. All the associated license files may be found in the directory docs/licenses of the binary project distribution.

Component	Version	Web	Specific notices
All platforms:
Castor	1.3	www.castor.org	Copyright 2004-2005 Werner Guttmann Copyright 1999-2004 (C) Intalio Inc., and others. All Rights Reserved.
Java Service Wrapper	3.2.3	wrapper.tanukisoftware.org	Copyright (c) 1999, 2006 Tanuki Software, Inc. Copyright (c) 2001 Silver Egg Technology
famfamfam icons	1.3	www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons	Many thanks to Mark James
JBoss Application Server	4.2.3	labs.jboss.com/jbossas	-
Only present on Windows platforms:
Wget	1.11.4b	www.gnu.org/software/wget	-
Inno Setup	5.2.3	www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php	Copyright (C) 1997-2008 Jordan Russell. All rights reserved.

The table below describes the additional 3d-party tools and libraries specifically used during the development stage (in particular to build the distribution). In each mentioned directory, you will find the associated license.

Component	Version	Web	Directory	Comment
Ant-related:
Apache Ant	1.7.1	ant.apache.org	-	-
XDoclet 1	1.2.3	xdoclet.sourceforge.net/xdoclet	`ext/xdoclet1`	-
Apache Commons Collections	3.2	commons.apache.org/collections	`ext/xdoclet1`	Used by XDoclet 1
Apache Commons Logging	1.1	commons.apache.org/logging	`ext/xdoclet1` and `ext/script`	Used by the Ant script task and XDoclet 1
Apache Jakarta Bean Scripting Framework	2.4.0	jakarta.apache.org/bsf	`ext/script`	Used by the Ant script task
BeanShell	2.0b4	www.beanshell.org	`ext/script`	Used by the Ant script task
DTDDoc	1.1.0	dtddoc.sourceforge.net	`ext/dtddoc`	-
DTDParser	1.20	www.wutka.com/dtdparser.html	`ext/dtddoc`	Used by DTDDoc
Jaxen	1.1.1	jaxen.codehaus.org	`ext/pmd`	Used by PMD
JHighlight	1.0	jhighlight.dev.java.net	`ext/dtddoc`	Used by DTDDoc
ObjectWeb ASM	3.1	asm.objectweb.org	`ext/pmd`	Used by PMD
PMD	4.2.5	pmd.sourceforge.net	`ext/pmd`	-
Flex-related:
Adobe Flex SDK	3.2	opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK	-	The Flex Data Visualization component (trial version) is included in the source distribution
iconv	1.9.2	www.gnu.org/software/libiconv	`ext/iconv-1.9.2.win32`	-
Separate tools:
Vim	7.1	www.vim.org	-	A special and big “thank you” to Bram Moolenaar and his wonderful tool, which I'm using since so many years!
Google Web Toolkit	1.5.3	code.google.com/webtoolkit	-	-
Sun JDK	6	java.sun.com/javase	-	-
OpenOffice	2.4	www.openoffice.org	-	-
Jude Community	5.2.1	jude.change-vision.com	-	-
Inno Setup Form Designer	2.0.8	isfd.kaju74.de/index.php?isfd	-	-

Acknowledgements

And finally I would like to thank in particular:

My family for having let me work on this project during my free time, especially during week-ends
Thomas Robert for the project's name, and for constructive remarks on the GUI
Mike Sharp for tests, English misspellings, and improvement suggestions
Frédéric Pabot for the user authentication process
Raynald Huaulmé for numerous links to bet-related Web sites
Olivier Debon for licensing and advertising issues
King Features Syndicate, Inc. / Hearst Holdings, Inc. / Fleischer Studios, Inc. for letting me use implicitly the "Betty Boop" character for the project's icon (implicit, because I still have no response to my requests for permission to use it)

Table of contents

Features