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Edited on Fri Jul-18-03 04:08 PM by Vitruvius
normal "teething troubles". Changing over to new software is always a BEAR -- I was ASTOUNDED when they got the new software up & running on schedule; in industry, the norm is delay-after-delay-after-delay.
The new software worked excellently for the first few days, then ran into trouble; my guess is that some problems surfaced once the system was loaded up with the data from those days' worth of postings; i.e. once there was a full set of active data (the roughly one weeks' worth of postings which account for nearly all of the accesses). That's a lot of data -- it's tough to simulate beforehand (it's doable, but doing so is not the norm in most of industry and DU does not have an IT Dep't, besides which, simulating such loading effects is normally done by the software vendor) -- this is an utterly normal sort of glitch...
My guess is that they're working with the outfit that wrote the software package (that they got it up & initially running well strongly suggests they did things right as end users) and/or considering augmenting their hardware (the new software is much more capable than the old -- and may well require more 'horsepower'; also, my experience has been that the problems show up at peak usage times -- when the system is both handling the full amount of data and the peak number of users).
I do like the new software, and I'd bet money that the DU administrators will have it working well fairly soon. In the meantime, I tend to log on at off-peak times, and my user experience has been almost entirely excellent.
I'm glad they made the change.
Vitruvius
P.S: The DU gang did do a much better job than most IT Departments I've worked with in industry -- but then again, the DU gang are Democrats, so I'd expect them to be smarter.
(Upon edit): It's possible DU is the largest board running this software -- especially if it is a new version; it's always the largest user that experience the loading effects. In which case, the vendor is probably writing patches & fixes even as we speak.
If I were the vendor, I'd view DU as a "flagship user" -- and use it as a selling point; "If our software can handle DU with 30,000 very active users, it can handle your application".
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