D'Arcy Norman dot net » lcwebsite

Teaching Resources Database

dnorman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I’ve just updated our Teaching Resources database to use a copy of the lightweight asset management system I built for the Pachyderm project.

Previously, the TR database had been developed as a WebObjects application, connecting to an XStreamDB XML database. That performed really well, and made for nice reliable queries, but meant an editing interface was more difficult to develop.

Now that it’s just a simple MySQL database, and a simple PHP script running the queries and interface, it’s easy to manage, and performs quite well.

There are currently 622 teaching resources (books, websites, documents), in 28 different teaching-related topics. It is a collection of links, gathered by ourselves and the VP Academic’s office from relevant sources around the internet.

Learning Commons Workshops RSS Feed

dnorman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I just enabled an RSS feed for upcoming workshops conducted by the Learning Commons.

Haven’t added the orange XML link to the workshops pages yet, but here’s the link. It updates every morning at 1:00am with the upcoming workshops.

Learning Commons Server now updated

dnorman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Almost done updating the Learning Commons webserver to MacOSX 10.3 Server. Process went ok. Not as smoothly as I’d hoped, but better than I’d feared. The installer wouldn’t let me do an “Archive and Install” so all I had to choose from was “Erase and Install” and “Update” – 2 options I never use when installing MacOSX. I chose “Update”.

It kept all settings, accounts, etc… and the whole process was pretty painless.

Dealing with MySQL was a different story. I took Alan’s advice and installed the standard MySQL distro rather than using the built-in MySQL. It’s working ok, but I had fun getting our data in. We were previously using MySQL 3.23.something, and the import barfed on the mysql table – different number of columns needed in 4.0.17… I added them into the SQL dump by hand. Ick.

And, some apps just plain aren’t able to connect to MySQL on the commons server for some mysterious reason. Doh.

All other webstuff seems in order – PHP, Perl, etc… are Just Working.

Still working through some weirdnesses, but it’s basically there. Some of the apps on the server aren’t working yet, but as soon as the MySQL stuff gets resolved, we’re good to go.

We’re planning on picking up a couple of shiny new XServe G5s and an XServe RAID, so this is going to be a kick-ass server farm. Planning on moving our apps onto one server, streaming media to another, and CAREO to a third, with metric assloads of storage available for all via the XServe RAID…

Really loving the integrated admin app…

New version of the Learning Commons Website goes live

dnorman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

The latest version of the LC website just went live. Mostly a restructuring of content, so it’s easier to find stuff without having to decipher which section it might be in. This is using more CSS to handle the layout (at least for the navigation portion), so we’ll see how the old, crappy Netscape 4.7 that is still the institutional standard here holds up (rumour has it we’re going to make the leap to Mozilla in September. Can’t WAIT to drop support for a browser crafted in 1996!)

This is version 1.5 of the WebObjects app used to drive the LC website. We’re planning v2.0 this summer, with some better UI design, and probably an under-the-hood rewrite to take advantage of the upcoming CAREO/Extreme frameworks.