GeorgiaVIEW

GeorgiaVIEW

1. SMART (Section Migration Archive and Restore Tool) created for us by the Georgia Digital Innovation Group seemed well received. I’m glad. DIG worked tirelessly on it on an absurdly short schedule.
2. Information is strewn about in too many places. There isn’t one place to go for information. Instead between Blackboard, VistaSWAT, and GerogiaVIEW about 29. I amazed I do find information.
3. Blackboard NG 9 is too tempting for some.
4. Vista does DTD valdiation but not very well. We need to XML validation before our XML files are run. As we do not control the source of these files and errors by those creating the files cause problems, we run them in test before running in production. I am thinking of something along the lines of validating the file and finding the errors and reporting to the submitter the problems in the file. Also, it should do XML schema validation so we can ensure the data is as correct as possible before we load it.

This is the second time I have worked on making Vista integration work with Banner. The first was 2005 in Vista 3.0.3 at Valdosta State. The production here at GeorgiaVIEW was set up by Harold, Jill, and Amy years ago and integrated into the install scripts or part of the cloned databases.

So now I am working on getting it to work in Vista 8. The IMS imports worked the first time like a charm. When I turned to using the Luminis adapter, the person records worked fine but the group contexts failed in Vista 8 and worked fine in Vista 3. So the “siapi.sh luminis import restrict” works fine.

Command-line

We have 41 institutions in Vista 3 currently. So imports are automated to some degree to preserve the sanity of Jill (and to a lesser degree Amy and myself). Rather than put in the UI all the settings, we have a properties file defining the location, glcid, sourcedid.source and sourcedid.id for each institution. This allows us to easily pass the values when importing at the command-line.

My first approach was to leave the settings identical to what I used to create persons and group records with IMS. This essentially uses the glcid of the institution and sourcedid of the institution. This is what resulted in the person records working and groups not. Fail.

I realized my error in logic must be the lack of a division-to-group relationship as the error described the groups cannot be related to an institution. So I changed the properties to use the division values for the sourcedid. Fail.

So I went looking in “Guide to Integration with the SunGard Luminis Data Integration Suite” for what I ought to use at the command-line. I didn’t find a solution. Just the same command-line lacking even the glcid and sourcedid.

XML

Giving up on the command-line approach for now, I added the relationship element to the XML so the group would become a child of one of the divisions I created with IMS. It sorta worked! The groups all imported but the course failed with the exact same error the groups formerly succeeded. To add insult to injury, simply running the import again on the exact same file had the courses import.

Mistakes

A mistake I made was reading the documentation: “Guide to Integration with the SunGard Luminis Data Integration Suite”.

Sungard Libraries:

1. Page 8 says imq.jar and mbclient.jar do not come with CE/Vista and must be obtained from Sungard. All three of us thought in Vista 3.x these were automatically placed so we didn’t need to place them. Best I can tell, these were installed by Vista. I found $WEBCTDOMAIN/customconfig/startup.properties references both files in CUSTOM_CLASSPATH and setEnv.sh references CUSTOM_CLASSPATH. (This document has notes for what CE customers need to do and no note about CE users needing to go get them from Sungard.)
2. Those who believe the last note would keep reading and find on Page 9 instructions to deposit the files in $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverlibs/. Assuming I am wrong about item #1, the startup.properties expects them in $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverlibs/luminis/ and would not find them where the document says to put them.

Work for OIIT!

Become our 4th DBA / technical support person for our team.

• Located in Athens, GA (college town, UGA football)
• $, benefits, generous leave, rare snow
• we love open source

Check out the PDF (right) for more information.

Sorry for the convoluted route to the application…

• Click this link to go to our HR site.
• Click the “View Job Postings / Apply for Job” link.
• Check the “Information Instructional Tech” box.
• Enter “learning” for the keyword and click search.
• “Systems Support Specialist 3” is our DBA position. We also have a Business Systems Analyst position for a less technical position.

We’d love to have you.

Mashable has an interesting article about why Twitter persists despite frequent performance issues: “Less is more. Simplicity is power.” By providing little more than an API, upon which numerous others have built tools, it doesn’t so directly compete with other services.

I wonder if perhaps this is the right approach for a learning system? One size no longer fits all. Blackboard Vista is chock full of dozenss of tools and hundreds of settings. This made their products a behemoth to administrate. A lighter system where only the tools people wish to use could help.

On the flip side, a project like GeorgiaVIEW serves thousands of faculty members. All the tools in Blackboard Vista are not enough to satisfy all of the faculty. They want us to integrate with dozens of third party tools, namely the one which will make their class work. An easy API to write against would ultimately mean we would have more tools than we struggle to administrate today.

I guess this is my rejection of the Personal Learning Environment. As great as it is for students and the faculty, the IT who have to support them will fail to support them.

Do you talk about computers, software, or web sites as manifesting human-like behaviors? Personally, I have.

At work, we manage several machines who collectively provide the GeorgiaVIEW service. When a machine is completely unresponsive, then we refer to it as having died. When a machine stops a performance issue, we refer to it as happy. I call my car cranky when it fails to run well.

Besides, electronics and vehicles, are there other examples?

Blackboard implemented a ranking system to determine the priority of support tickets. This effort uses criteria like the age and recency of updates to ensure the attention of Technical Support Managers. Certainly this initiative is due to continuing customer complaints about languishing tickets. Last spring we saw a similar push to fix support.

We have a weekly call with our Blackboard TSM where we discuss the status and priority of the issues. As GeorgiaVIEW is a consortium, these calls allow us to track the progress of the couple dozen of active tickets. From our vantage point, the tickets get verified as a bug in relatively short order and escalated to Development in rather short order.

Once there, the tickets languish for months to years. Most tickets impact a single section so once grades are posted, a fix is pointless. Even one ticket who passes this point to me proves a failure in the system. As fixing the issue after this point solves nothing. It cannot help anyone as the class is inactive. Yet, we hold on in hope someone might look at the issue and provide a fix for the next time this happens. Maybe that will be another customer or ourselves soon?

Unless a fix is provided immediately, we start losing the confidence of the instructors or students. Within only two weeks, we have irrevocably lost the confidence of these users. At that point we are incompetent to this person and may never be able to regain trust.

Our TSM seems effective in the realm in which she operates (confirming bugs, providing known solutions, and pestering Development for updates). We hawkishly ensure no tickets are dropped through the cracks.

If the goal really is to make the customers happy, then providing us timely updates that nothing is being done will not cut it. Provide the resources to Development to get our tickets resolved. Only then will our users be happy.

First Metricocracy measured hits. Pictures and other junk on pages inflated the results so Metricocracy decided on either unique visitors or page views. Now, the Metricocracy wants us to measure attention. Attention is engagement, how much time users spend on a page.

What do we really want to know? Really it is the potential value of the property. The assumption around attention is the longer someone spends on a web site, the more money that site gains in advertisement revenue. The rationale being users who barely glance at pages and spend little time on the site are not going to click ads. Does this really mean users who linger and spend large amounts of time on the site are going to click more ads?

This means to me attention is just another contrived metric which doesn’t measure what is really sought. I guess advertisement companies and the hosts brandishing them really do not want to report the click through rates?

My web browsing habits skew the attention metric way higher than it ought to be. First, I have a tendency to open several items in a window and leave them lingering. While my eyes spent a minute looking the content, the page spent minutes to hours in a window… waiting for the opportunity. Second, I actively block images from advertisement sources and block Flash except when required.

As a DBA, page views also has debatable usefulness. On the one hand we could use it because it represents a count of objects requiring calls to the database and rendering by application and web server code. Hits represent all requests for all content, simple or complex, so is more inclusive. Bandwidth throughput represents how much data is sucked out or pushed into the systems.

We DBAs also provide supporting information to the project leaders. Currently they look at the number of users or classrooms who have been active throughout the term. Attention could provide another perspective to enhance the overall picture of how much use our systems get.

Cat Finnegan, who conducts research with GeorgiaVIEW tracking data, measures learning effectiveness. To me, that is the ultimate point of this project. If students are learning with the system, then it is successful. If we can change how we do things to help them learn better, then we ought to make that change. If another product can help students learn better, then that is the system we ought to use.

Ultimately, I don’t think there is a single useful metric. Hits, unique users, page views, attention, bandwith, active users, etc., all tell me provide a nuanced view of what is happening. I’ve used them all for different purposes.

.

• Wimba has a PowerLink (version 1.5) for their version 5.0 to work with Vista 3.
• First look for USG admins look at Vista 4.2.3.
  • Anyone remember WebCT CE?
• Definitely a period of time Vista 3 and 4 are both in production. (Ref)

So, you want to know who I am…. Hopefully you are in it for the long haul so you will post some comments, drop me some email (sneezypb at the most popular free email sites like GMail), subscribe to my blog.

Click for larger…

Am I my job? In that case, I could say I am a Database Administrator. Many of you probably don’t even know what that means. That’s okay, I’m not sure it means much. LOL Mainly I work with Blackboard Vista and ensure to the health of the software. My kicks come from taking something nebulous and determining scope and solution to the issue. The GeorgiaVIEW project has grown one of the largest implementations of Blackboard Vista world wide. Previously, at Valdosta State University, I worked with Vista, Luminis, Banner, Apache, and web design.

Am I my hobbies? In that case, I could say I am a computer geek, an amateur photographer, a bookworm, a blogger, or a social network junkie.

Am I my list of friends? Certainly, I don’t have an extraordinary EQ, so the huge list of contacts should not be interpreted as my list of friends. Yes, I know lots and lots of people. I just don’t know them well. Do check out my blogroll. Those are all exceptional people who in some shape or form impact my opinions.

I use a Canon Digital Rebel XT and Canon Power-Shot SD800 IS (Elph) digital cameras. The Elph goes everywhere with me. The Rebel I break out for special events. One can find more about my cameras and lenses in my profile at Flickr.

My Digital Footprint:

• Blogs:
  • Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric Version 4 - This one.
  • Ezra - Was main blog for a time. Mainly keep it up as some friends blog there “Friends Only” on LiveJournal.
  • Voice on Xylene - Hosted on Vox, a competitor to LJ and Blogger. Pretty much unused.
  • Sneezy Speaks - Hosted on Blogger, another competitor to LJ and Vox.
  • Technorati -Technorati Reactions - RRRv4
• Books
  • Goodreads - More social. Compare books is kind of cool.
  • Google Books - This one provides great details on the books. Made from an export of Goodreads.
  • LibraryThing - Lots of detail about books, authors, and users.
• Bookmarks
  • Del.icio.us
• Microblogs / Nanoblog
  • Friendfeed
  • Jaiku
  • Plurk
  • Pownce
  • 
• Music
  • Last.fm Music
• Photography
  • My Flickr - Initially just photos. As I’ve gotten more into photography, its come along nicely and perhaps has the more interesting stuff.
  • Freelove Photography
• Social
  • 
  • LinkedIn
  • Mashable
  • Myspace
  • Plaxo
• Travel
  • 43Places - Where I have been and wish to go.
• Video
  • YouTube Videos

A more comprehensive “About Me” page. I’m not for hire. This especially goes for snooping folks from Blackboard, Inc.!!