The Network

[Jack]

"Network System":

• Have access to the data on a public computer to teams at regionals & Nats.
• "Master DB" Located on one site/server
• "Master DB" Located on multiple sites/servers
• XML for data transfer/sync'ing

That's the list from the overall brainstorm about the network of this system.

Now, I know that everything is not going to be located on one server. It's just impossible if this is to be "open" to all teams & not belong to just one.

Now, what are some ideas that you guys have of the best way to do this...

Some ideas would be:

Portal -> Underlying sites with data handleing for different data types

Portal -> Underlying sites with data handleing for team numbers

What are some other comments/ideas you have on this part of the network?

Jack

[Erin Rapacki]

have a master form for the TEAM themselves to fill out information about their robot (have polls displayed on master form)

have additional forms for ANYBODY to fill out, it'll kinda work like the polls on Delphi, where when a team scouter fills out information about this OTHER team... it'lll be compiled with a bunch of other scouter's opinions and and give an overall percentage or rating

ex:
on a scale from 1-5 (1 poor, 5 good) Rate the Driving ability?

scouter1 enters 3
scouter2 enters 2
scouter3 enters 5
scouter4 enters 4
scouter5 enters 3
scouter6 enters 5
and bla bla bla....


and the team page will show:

Driving ability:
1 0%
2 16.7%
3 33%
4 16.7%
5 33%

that'll be a really easy way to view data and get the overall opinion of different scouters (which is most of the time more reliable than the team telling you themselves)

lol... I thought of this last fall, I just have no website programming ability (i'll teach myself soon tho)


ByE

erin

[Jack]

Erin Rapacki, thanks for your comments and they are a good idea. However, they weren't quite what i was looking for.

Here is what i'm looking for...

After thinking this over, and from some other posts in the Overall Brainstorm thread, here is my best idea now. I really want all of your feedback, because with it, this system will only get better... k, here it is:

Have one site be an "Overall Portal" site. Here would be the "base" for the system. It would mostly consist of a listing of all the teams with different possible sort methods. You would click on a team, and you would be directed to the site which contained the data for that team. At that sub-site, you would be able to find all the data on that team, along with being able to download the data in a format that would upload to your pda,ppc,paper...

Now, this method makes sure that even though one team is a "base" for the network, anything more must be found through sub-sites. The draw back here is that the data is spread through multiple db's. Also, I am unsure of how uploading all the data for one event would work.

Actually, now thinking about this, I don't like it that much any more, but it's the best so far.... Please keep the ideas coming

Thanks,

Jack

[Kevin A]

Before a compitition, a team could go and download all the viedos from soap, and get all the data. Basically, eliminate the need to go out on the internet. There are sick people in our community who have enough hard drive room to do this, and it would be way faster.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Kevin A
Before a compittion, a team could go and download all the viedos from soap, and get all the data.

Correct. However, where / how will the data (Not videos, but actual data) be stored?

On one server? On more than one?

If the data is on more than one, then how would it be divided up?

[Kevin A]

At a single competition it would be stored on one server/computer. There would also be an internet server, not specific to one compitition, that would have all the data. It should be backed up, but not devided up. Im not quite sure about the question,

The data could periodically be uploaded to the internet server.

HTH

[Neal Turett]

This would require Internet access to be available to all the teams that wanted to use it, and the connection would have to be fast enough to support uploading and downloading of

This causes many problems. Yes, we could run a copy of 2003 Server with WMS or Linux and stream, or just have it there as a file server. This entails having some form of network infastrucature running. The 2 choices would be WiFi or ethernet.

WiFi wouldn't be that bad, with the downsides being the range, speed, and packet loss. All three of those would get real annoying if trying to stream or download video. You could run text and images no prob though.

Ethernet has none of these disadvantages. I love ethernet. The only problem is that you have to run wires. I suppose we could wire the pits, but it would sorta be a pain. My firends + I do LAN parties a lot, so I have about 30 ports worth of hubs I could borrow, and I can find more if I have too.... but is it really worth it?

As far as I can tell, the only way that we could connect be be through WiFi, or have one central collection point for all the data. Have a table with the central server, a hub, Palm and PPC sync cradles, a laser printer, and a scanner and let them come, donate their data and walk away with everyone elses...

I would personally favor the physcial collection point idea... it's simple and effective.

I'm on Jack's team, and will probably end up doing some of programming anyway (especially the PocketPC and Palm side of things.) Since I've heard request for paper forms, I've been kicking around the idea of writing a customized OCR program to take data from these forms into the database... we'll see.

[Stefan]

Our team has a scout DB, But its in MS Access. It has a few holes in it. We had 2 ppl entering data and One person in the back of our RV printing stuff off. It has match info and robot descriptions. Match info has info about every match that that robot played in. The paper forms looked exactly like the sheets of paper. If you want it. Go to our site and DL it if you want to see it. It could give you ideas for something bigger.

Note for web implementation. It would be beast to have the DB entry just like on the main site.

Anothere note to start off for cheapness. You could have an anymonus FTP or apache since its web based on your home computers. Diff computer in diff Time zone throught the country. Got to DnyDns.org and have them with urls like. FSN-ga.homeftp.net .... ga for georgia. Maybe about 5 or 6 mirrors would do with DSL connect. this would be just for keeping the DB aviable and acessable. During the regional the info could be uploaded to the closest server. and at end of day some one not envloved wit that regional could sync the DB's / servers.