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December 23, 2005
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I am outta here for a week, returning on January 3rd, 2006!
Posted by rossm at 1:59 PM | Comments (0)
Safety Schema Moves
After a lot of tweaking, importing-exporting, testing and coordination with Banner Dale, Mike S. and I managed to move the safety/parking schema over to Aero. This was one of the thornier applications to move because it not only has links to Banner, but also links from Banner back to the application. Brian W., Mike S. and Mike Staats all performed the Banner related tasks. Dale placed the redirect in the login package and also put some email monitors throughout the Wilb app in case we missed something. I did an export/import by hand, using a parameter file that looks like this:
GRANTS=N
IGNORE=Y
INDEXES=N
LOG=safimp.log
TABLES=*
It's pretty straightforward except the IGNORE. This entry means "Yes, ignore object already exists error." In this way, I had earlier set up all the tables, grants, indexes, constraints on Aero the way I wanted them and tested it all out. Then, I just truncated the tables, did the import of the table data into the already existing tables, and did not mess up the framework. It worked very nicely.
Another item that was interesting was resetting the sequence numbers. This step was overlooked when we moved the schema over for testing and it soon was spawning the incorrect numbers and messing up such things as primary key constraints, etc. It was easy to look at the Wilb sequences, note the next number they were going to give out, then set up the Aero sequences to pass out that same number. This also prevented us from skipping a bunch of numbers for parking permit numbers (which relate to real world parking stickers).
The final (I hope) hurdle was solving this problem: A user reported that some of the values in one of the drop down boxes were missing. Hmmm....A quick check of the tables showed they were exactly the same - no missing records. So, the exp/imp did not drop any data. It also showed that the tables DID have the missing elements in them. What the heck?? So, by passing the mouse over the link I could see the package that was being called to display a new window with the problematic drop down box. The chase was on, because this package called off to the webdb.wwv_usr_static_lov$ table. Well, that table was missing the newer records on Aero, so a quick import of the Wilb counterpart table solved that problem. Easy fix, but a nightmare to find the trouble spot.
Let me just say a word here about the importance of commenting your code. Please, do it! This schema is an excellent example of the pain you cause by not commenting your code. This was written by Mike Lorengo, who did a really nice job of coding it, EXCEPT there isn't one comment in it anywhere. Well, Mike is gone and there is no one here who knows the first thing about how this app is put together. It is no fun wading through all the packages, all the procedures, all the functions, all the tables, all the views, etc. and thousands of lines of code trying to figure out what goes where! A comment that, hey, such and such a table contains all the LOV values would have really helped.
Posted by rossm at 8:51 AM | Comments (1)
December 2, 2005
Toad's Wild Ride
Do you remember that funky ride at Disneyland where you get in the old car and go careening through the mansion? That pretty much sums up this Thursday's staff development time!
First, I met with Brian W., Mike S., Dale and Summer to plan the move of Safety/Parking off of Wilb and onto Aero. We discovered that a lot of the work has already been done, and divided up the remaining work among ourselves. I called Cheri and Nancy at public safety and got a time scheduled to move this behemoth. Good deal!
Let me just sum up the rest of the morning with - Good Job Troy! He bounced the Aero database, with some guidance from Travis, and all was well again. Many questions raised about developing on the production database....
Time's up! Nuts! Well, Dale called me and the PHP books he ordered came in, so we're going to pursue that......next week.
Posted by rossm at 9:53 AM | Comments (0)