« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
June 30, 2006
Project List
I didn't really have a professional development time today. VERCON will have to wait till next week. I have plenty of other things to do.
During my bi-monthly staff meeting this week, we talked about our summer todo lists. I gave an overview, but thought I might blog this week about my complete summer todo's (and hopefuls).
ONLINE HOUSING APP (10/1)
- Roommate Match, Preferences, CBORD Custom Programming, Online Payment
COMPUTRITION v15 UPGRADE/MIGRATION (8/1)
OUR WEBSITE UPDATE (9/1)
NEW ORACLE PROGRAMS
- WOUPortal (9/1), Work Order System (8/1)
ORACLE PROGRAM SECURITY UPDATES
- RSC (9/1), Timesheet (9/1)
REDWOLF UPDATES (9/1)
---------------------
I have a few other projects that I'm working on, but aren't critical for the summer:
- RSC PackageTracker
- Valsetz Comment Card
- Lab Helpdesk Troubleshooter
- Service Request System (for the lab & computing - only helping)
- BugTrack
- Off-Campus Housing
- Auto-registration system for residents
---------------------
These are my regular (weekly) tasks:
- AR Transactions
- Bi-weekly Blogs
- Professional Staff Development
- Deal with Copyright complaints for the halls
Posted by ellism at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Mish-Mash
Well I was out last wed-fri, but I'm back.
I've been working on some upgrades for the Timesheet App (student payroll), fixed a redwolf bug, a online housing app bug, been in some meetings preping for the new WOU website rollout, been playing with my new Blackberry (that probably deserves it's own blog), and lots of other little projects.
Soon, I'm going to be working on my WOUPortal and the Work Order System.
Posted by ellism at 2:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
VERCON
It lives!
Today John and I successfully backed-up two schemas' worth of code. We made a great deal of progress, and in the near future, I'm guessing we'll have the program ready for schema owners to setup preferences to have their own code backed-up.
Once we have the code backed-up, then we can setup a method for retreival. I'd like to create an auto-restore feature so that developers could 'revert' to a previously restored version with a single click. We'll see how feasible this is when we get there. For now, having backups could really save somebody's bacon.
Posted by ellism at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
New Online Housing Application
old hat. Haven't we heard it before? 'housing app', 'housing app', 'housing app'. It's not new. Not even kind of.
Ah, BUT! We've had an online housing application for the NEXT academic year, never for the CURRENT academic year. As of Friday, we'll have our first CURRENT academic year online housing application. Oct 1, 2006 the NEXT academic year app will return and we'll have two apps simultaneously. Why? Because from october through march someone might want to apply to live on campus NOW (or soon) or they might just be one of those Type A, early-bird planning types of people wanting to reserve their space. You know the type.
Anyway, now we can accomodate everyone. More importantly, there will be an application (or two) all 12 months, 52 weeks and 365.* days of the year. Stellar.
I need a blackberry.
Michael: Hi, my name is Michael and ... I'm a (recovering) Type A.
Everyone: HI MICHAEL!
Posted by ellism at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)
June 8, 2006
VERCON
Sadly, John was unable to join me today, as he was sick. But oh well - I still made some progress.
Today I worked out some multi-owner issues with the object auto-populating interfaces. I re-designed some interfaces, for more logical and efficient retrieval of code backups. I also took a lot of important phone calls which divided my focus, but progress is progress.
Posted by ellism at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
June 6, 2006
Success!
WOUPortal is on it's feet.
On suggestion from Bill, I converted my little RezPortal for 'my people' down here into WOUPortal. Don't we already have a portal, you ask? Sure, but it doesn't work with PL/SQL code - that's 90+% of what I need a portal for.
So I just wrote one. I made it for me, and for the RAs and the Housing & Dining staff. Then I expanded it, making it a campus-wide portal. Unfortunately, the only downside is that I can't integrate it into Mail, Calendar, IM (...others). Yet.
I'm going to get 'channels' going for weather, news, even some cute little search types of things.
You can see it now if you'd like. It's here.
Anyone on campus can use it. It just doesn't DO anything yet (preferences coming soon...) - except for me. But the admin tool is all done. Authentication is done. I can even support public packages (and soon pass-through into the online housing app/resignup process).
Anyway, I'm happy. It's brought me some joy of coding that I've been missing of late. I'm even writing comments (heaven forbid). Maybe it's a pipe dream. But right NOW ... it's my dream.
Posted by ellism at 2:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 1, 2006
Vercon & Permissions
I was pleased by the progress we made last week on Vercon. We ended our StaffDev by running into a little permissions issue. I am even MORE pleased with the progress we made today. Earlier today, John did some research and found a page with a possible solution.
We followed the advice of the solution that John found. However we ran into a new permissions issue. After a phone call and a new permission, I was able to create a view to a sys (oracle user) table. From there, I was able to grant view access to the Vercon program.
Today we also made sure that new owners (schemas) were being added automatically (daily - all with jobs). Also, we are auto-adding any objects of those owners.
Next we'll use the owner backup option (locked=no backup, backup=backup, version control=15 different backups per object) and create backups of each object. Vercon doesn't backup tables, only functions, procedures, packages, and package bodies.
The basic functionality of the program will backup all objects of all schemas (each night the job will run and will update any changed objects).
The next step will be to have a correctly functioning version control feature which will display the code from each version (allowing folks to copy the code into an editor and recompile it.
The final step would be to have a button next to each copy of the code, allowing the owner to 'revert' to a listed version of the code. It will also create a backup of the current code, allowing the owner to re-revert.
In some ways, I've complixified (new word) the tables required to hold code for PL/SQL. Oracle's method basically uses only one table to hold all the code of all the objects. You could argue that it uses two - the second one holds dates like last update, etc... To do multiple backups (version control), I had to add a third table. I added the fourth table to allow for future modifiction, such that individual objects could be set to no_backup, backup, version_control, etc... This would allow someone to control backups at the object level vs. the schema (owner) level. We won't implement that unless need be - but if we do we won't have to alter the table design.
Posted by ellism at 7:51 PM | Comments (0)