STU188 - Test review

The application has been in testing now since september 28th, it has been through peer test with another developer and most recently the user testing.

Many issues have been brought up, the first few halted the peer test process. I feel like the application should have been finished to a better standard however I'm only just learning what that standard is and without the issues being raised by the testing I don't think I would come across them.

This is where I have started to learn about validation, a lot of the issues raised have been how the application deals with a user going back to correct their mistakes. once the user goes backwards through the sequence of pages the application starts to lose data before it can be written to the database.

I am also learning about the difference in web browsers, some of the issues raised in testing have been down to how the page displays in different browsers.

This may sound slightly naive, I had developed the application in firefox however when it was ran in internet explorer the output was quite a bit different which in turn caused errors in the styling settings meaning that bits of the page displayed in strange places with a layout we hadn't designed.

Iv'e had to ask for more help to get round these problems, greg and petra have both help a lot with the application.

During the corrective work I have worked some late nights, I feel that with some of the issues outstanding where I have not known enough to just simply amend them I have put the time into researching and experimenting with the software in order to reach a solution. Previously when I've done this it has been in controlled and I have had a clear plan on what I was doing I why the extra time needs to be applied. On this project I still feel quite nervous about whether I am doing the job right, given the allotted budget on the project I want to make sure I am doing the correct work and still managing to keep the budget from increasing. Aside from this I feel that I don't want to fail in front of my new colleagues.

As Ive been working through my corrections I have been given server access to work in situ, however as Ive been making changes I have been doing the changes on my machine and copying the code over to the server. The problem is my development version is not an exact copy of the productions version and I believe I have brought back bugs which I have previously resolved.

UNIX

Also on the go at the moment is the UNIX training course, I am currently mid way through attending 3 training days, an introduction, intermediate and a shell scripting class.

If you are still reading this at this point then the chances are you know what UNIX is, for any non IT people its reasonable for you to see UNIX as the underpinning language of modern network and server systems, generally accepted as being superior to MS Windows, its highly versitile, robust and can be made into all sorts of wonderful things (commercially things such as Apple macs, Playstations, Android mobile os's) and its Open Source, its free.

The first class was of course introductory and covered the basic commands, the class was part lecture part self teach with a murder mystery that could only be solved by navigating around the server finding files, decrypting files, running functions and scripts and was all in all a good ice breaker to the language if you hadn't studied it before. Thankfully I could remember the UNIX module from University.

The second lesson was noticeably more advanced and showed us more functions and tools that the language offered. This class also introduced "Piping" which is the method of chaining functions together to achieve a desired output, thats the best way I can explain it without a UNIX lesson on my blog.

This was followed by another murder mystery, again using the techniques we were taught during the day and again it was noticeably harder.

The next session is the one I'm looking forward to, Shell scripting is the method of writing non compiled scripts that can be executed on a UNIX system. I'll update more once I've had the course.

Project: Infinite RES032

As yet I've not mentioned Infinite, mainly due to the work on STU188 however I have time now and want to speak about the new project.

Infinite is a workflow management system which is to be implemented between the bodies who deal with the pre and post award of research grants at the university.

The research award process is managed by Edinburgh Research and Innovation (ERI) and Finance Research Grants Section (RGS). Infinite is required to create a more efficient method of controlling the flow of information and workload between the two bodies, for example the system will only distribute tasks to users who have the appropriate authorisation for that class of task.

I am working on a component of Infinite, this component is a set of PL/SQL stored procedures which reside on the server instead of being embedded within a client based application.

Once I have completed each unit I will update as to what each unit does.

Currently my experience with PL/SQL is next to zero, I have done the training disks as spoke about in the beginning of this blog however you don't learn much without being involved in the work itself so I'm looking forward to getting into this project.

Ill update as we go.

STU188 Deployment....Nail biting stuff

Ok today is the day that my first build will go live, the build was signed off by the client yesterday and is currently going through the stages of implementation, noted in V Brown's email dated 14th October.

I have two tasks in this, one is the construction of the new live database which I have just finished, this was a case of making five databases out of the original single database and adding some new fields. The second task is a test of the Live system and making sure it works as intended now it's in the final stage of its development cycle, fingers and thumbs crossed the transition will be smooth and without any issues, however, I've said this before on this project.

On reflection, my last posting in this blog was maybe a bit over critical, I fully understand that the process of learning includes being educated by the mistakes we make and that sometimes those mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, at this stage of my development I'm not even sure I can call it a mistake if It's the first time I encounter such a thing.

It is however a definite lesson and another solid piece of knowledge to add to the foundation of my career in Software Development.