Recently in IRB Application Category

An error (bug) was reported with the IRB application form. When users entered information that was "too long" into the textareas, the PL/SQL application would terminate. The cause of the problem was the fact that the columns were not long enough to accommodate the information being entered. I tried increasing the lengths of the affected columns, but this caused further problems within the PL/SQL code.

I now have a temporary fix in place for the production version of the application. For now, I have commented out the code containing the SQL statements to insert data into the tables. Users should now be able to complete the form and generate a printer-friendly version. I will need to evaluate each table and the appropriate insert statements. I am considering simply combining several of the tables into just one or two, as I believe this will result in the application running more efficiently.

I met with Mark Girod and Hank Bersani today to discuss needed changes to the IRB application form. The form is only part of the larger IRB website, which needs some improvement as well.

For now, we will make more cosmetic changes to the form in order to improve the readability and flow as users complete the lengthy application. Mark and Hank decided to review, with the committee, the need for the form to be an online, Oracle-based application. It is remotely possible that the committee may decide so simplify things by just using a Microsoft Word version of the form, where users will submit in hard copy. With what I have in place, if the decision is made to continue with the Oracle-based form, I will proceed with my goal of developing a searchable database, where committee members can generate "printer-friendly" forms "on-the-fly".

This morning I completed a migration of my development version of the IRB application into the production schema on Aero. I completed this migration without incident. I’m still working on several changes to this system, but those I’ve made thus far are steps in the right direction.

In the latest version of the HTML application form, I have fixed several readability issues that, in my opinion, make the form more user-friendly. Also, behind-the-scenes, I have added code to populate the Oracle tables with actual data when users click to submit the form. For whatever reason, code was not included for this in the last production version. I have some technical details to resolve in this area, and I will put these changes into production as appropriate.

While I have spent most of my time thus far working on the form itself, I plan to make some improvements to the interface used by the committee. My goals are to fix some readability issues and to give committee members the capability to search the database in order to generate printer-friendly, completed, forms.

Summer and I had a meeting this morning with Hank Bersani to discuss the IRB application and form. I gave a demonstration of the current development of the form. Dr. Bersani seemed to be pleased that progress is being made with the project as well as with the changes I have made to the form to make it more readable and user-friendly.

Dr. Bersani will suggest further changes to be made to the form for the short term and I will put the current version of the form into production by the end of September. Later this fall, my goal is to develop the capability of retrieving electronic copies of completed forms, which will be a great help to the committee.

I have the form and administrative module working in a test environment and am making progress as a whole. I can enter test data into the form and generate a printer-friendly version.

I expect to have the form in production by Fall Term. I need to make some cosmetic changes to the form itself and have the form populate the various Oracle tables when users complete the online form.

Longer-term, my goal is to allow the IRB committee members to view the form contents online by querying the tables.