Showing posts with label special project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label special project. Show all posts

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Conversion halted...

Well, the Perl-to-PHP conversion has been put on hold (although I haven't stopped reading about PHP). I now have to write two web pages to allow management of tickets that are generated. Also, they want to know the status of a request that was made, regardless if a ticket was created or not.

I have to add a couple of index columns to the TicketData table to track the requestor by their employee number, name, alias, etc. This means that I have to modify all scripts and web pages that generate tickets, about 10 or so.

I need to get this to work this week before the end of the month.

Wish me luck!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Update...

The "Special Project" is running well now. It has processed over 75 tickets the first week. Not bad. It is on track as to what we told them, 300 tickets per month.

I'm still "learning" PHP. I abandoned the text book that I was reading -- got tired of correcting the mistakes in the text and examples. If I had written it, I would be ashamed of all the errors. :-\

In PHP, there are two methods of connecting to MySQL. One called "mysql_connect()" and "mysqli()". The author kept flopping back and forth between the two, mixing them up to the point that the examples could not have worked. I could understand a little if the text was wrong, but for the examples to be wrong, it just tells me that they didn't even try to run them in the first place. Simplest thing.

And it pissed me off that the author would use PHP code without explaining what it was or why it was being used. She just throws it in there and ignores the fact that it is there. This tells me that she finally got around to running the example, fixed it and didn't bother to add text to explain the fix.

I'm now reading "PHP and MySQL for Dummies". For the most part, I've found that these types of books are not bad if you are trying to learn a programming language. I had this book all along. I should have started with this in the first place. Well, I'll be sure and post a comment here on it.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Production!!

Well, the implementation of the "special project" went without any hitches, sort of.

It did not take long to realize that something was not right. The tickets were going in as me (I'm the default if the code can't look up the user in our corporate directory).

I quickly fixed the problem (talk about pulling code out of your *ss), and then had to go and change the tickets to their rightful owner.

Otherwise, it was a sucess. After a day, there were 20+ tickets that were processed. So, at this rate, it will double what tickets the Service Desk reported. My guess is, since it is via email to them and they have no SLAs on email, they are only reporting those tickets they create and not the requests coming into them.

Anyway, time will tell...

Monday, July 13, 2009

Implementation...

OK, sorry that I have not posted sooner, been busy.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, 14-Jul) the “Special Project” will be implemented. Actually, it will be the Q-n-D process and not the final solution I had hoped for (the quick-and-dirty being the process of redirecting the email to a daemon process instead of the talking directly to the mid-tier web server to create tickets).

Ran into a snag. For some strange reason, someone had removed the MX records for the target email domain (all except for the SMTP server itself) and so email was not being relayed by our gateway mail servers. Restored the MX records. Spent the whole day trying to find out who removed them, but was not able to.

So, the Project will be implemented tomorrow sometime UK time, not sure when. I think I’ll wake up to see if the changes have been implemented. If it all explodes and dumps sh*t all over the place, I’ve got a backup plan. Every thing is logged and a backup copy of the email is kept for this kind of failure. I’ve fully tested it on my development server, but as some of you may know, something always creeps in and ruins a good thing.

Hope all goes well!!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Missed Deadline...

Well, I missed that deadline. The "special" project I've been talking about was to be completed in Q2, but since the test server is STILL being built, I missed it.

Well, I might be able to squeek it by. The current system sends an email to our Service Desk, requesting that they create tickets. Well, in the short run, thinking of changing the email address to an email processor I've already written for other projects, and have it create the tickets automatically.

It's quick-n-dirty, but it's temporary until either (A) the rebuild of the existing test server is completed, or (B) I build my own test server. I've already started on (B) by building a virtual Ubuntu server on my workstation at work. The only thing is, the US Embargoed country's requests will still have to go to the Service Desk -- I cannot support or help them. :-/

So, I think I will work on that for now and hopefully will have it finished by this evening.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Learning on the Fly...

Well, the test server has not completely been rebuilt, so I have to move on. On the production server, I attempted to install the needed Perl modules and ran into several snags. Some of them won't compile.

So, I need to back up a bit. I hate having to learn a language on the fly, but it won't be the first time. The procedure that I have is written in Perl, and so I need to write it in PHP.

If you don't know what PHP is, it is a scripting language to generate dynamic web pages, with its interpreter written in C++. It originally stood for Personal Home Page, but has moved away from that. A lot of the syntax is similar to C++, so it should not be too hard, right?

So, I'm looking for the right "...Dummies" book to give me what I need -- PHP and SOAP messages over SSL. If you know of any, please comment. Anyway, I'll most likely have to pick and choose from the Internet, like always. :-/

For example, I've written some JavaScript code to allow tab key input into a text field for forms, taken from here and there on the 'net. Found one code, that didn't work correctly, but I took that and ran with it (I don't remember who I got it from, so if it was you, sorry and let me know). Fixed it and it works great! The tab character is inserted into the text at the current cursor position.

The only problem is, the code that I have only works in IE. Since that is the accepted browser where I work, there is no immediate need to go further, but I would like more.

Here is the code:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function storeCaret(textEl) {
if (textEl.createTextRange)
textEl.caretPos = document.selection.createRange().duplicate();
}
function insertAtCaret(textEl, text) {
if (textEl.createTextRange && textEl.caretPos) {
var caretPos = textEl.caretPos;
caretPos.text = caretPos.text.charAt(caretPos.text.length - 1) == ' ' ? text + ' ' : text;
}
else
textEl.value = text;
}
function onKeyDown(textE2) {
var e = window.event;
storeCaret(textE2);
if (e.keyCode == 9) { // tab
insertAtCaret(textE2, "\t")
e.returnValue = false;
}
return true;
}
// -->
</script>



And all you have to do to get it to work is use the onKeydown="onKeyDown(this);" event handler on the text area you want to use it in.

If you know how to make this work in Netscape, let me know and I promise I will give you credit!!

PS. If you would like me to make the code available online, I'll figure something out (just tried to cut-n-paste and that sucked).

PPS. The limited control over text spacing here sux!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Delayed...

OK, since my last post, I hadn’t been able to work on that “special project”. The project has come to a halt due to the version of Ubuntu that the test application was on had expired.

So now, the server needs to be rebuilt before I can go forward. It sits in the UK and I’m here in Texas. Luckily the guy who built the app in the first place said that he will rebuild it today. I’ll have to see how far he’s gotten when I get into the office.

So then, I started working on the many other projects that I have been assigned. Some of them are rebuilding existing servers. So last week, I’ve rebuilt 4 Windows 2003 servers, 1 Windows 2008, 2 Solaris (UNIX) servers, and 2 Ubuntu servers. All were on new hardware. Thank God for multi-tasking. I was able to do a lot of the installs at the same time. I still have another Windows 2003 server to finish when I get in today.

Friday, I finished a project that monitored incoming email from the Domain Registrars for zones that are expiring. It opens a ticket with all the zone information (ie. owner, billing code, etc.), and assigns it to the appropriate group to process it.

Yesterday I picked back up on a program that I started over 3 months ago. It’s something that needs to be finished. I’ve been working around it, using the MySQL utilities and SQL statements. This in turn does have to do in part with the “special project” that has been delayed. It is a SOAP message queue manager. It’ll allow the users to modify and re-submit SOAP messages that failed to be processed. I should have this one done by this evening.

I liked it when I could pick and choose the projects…