wrote:
Jack wrote:
Mike wrote:
Any word on when the new system will be working properly and with some
regularity?

I'd say about the same time-frame as the old system, which is "not at all".

It would be nice if OLC would sort out the previous year's enhancements
before they adopt new ones.


Jack

If it's not broke why fix it? OLC did have a few bugs, but now it
seems to have hatched a new generation of bugs. As in viewing.

I was at the OLC symposium in Gersfeld/Roehn Germany yesterday, and had
a chance to talk to some of the developers on the OLC team. The old OLC
sysyem, though functional, was a technological dead end. It was one
large C-language program, written by one person, without documentation.
So it was not possible to make changes to one part of the program,
without affecting other parts. It was also not possible to support this
properly with a distributed team of volunteers.

The OLC team was faced with a decision at the beginning of the OLC year
earlier this month, whether to launch the OLC 2.0 this year, or wait
until next year. They decided that they did not want to spend any more
effort on the old platform, and instead decided to move to the new
platform now, even with it's shortcomings.

The new program has a modular architecture, so it is possible to have
different people work on different parts. Obviously some parts are not
working properly, and others are completely missing. Right now, the
main focus is on getting flight claims in and scored. The summary
statistics modules will be brought on line later in the year. Then
there are many new and exciting additions planned for the future. So
please pardon the dust and noise during construction, I think you will
like the results.

There have been problems with some flights getting zero score. Note
that the score is always zero right after the upload, because the
scoring is queued up and done offline. But if the score does not appear
after an hour or so, there is a problem. I have been able to get some
flights to score by re-starting the scoring process, now that limited
admin functions are available. We should be able to get all these
scoring errors corrected, so don't worry if you have scoring problems
for now, just keep claiming your flights.

The new claiming process is much easier than before. If you create a
username under registration, and login, your pilot name and birthdate
is already entered on the flight claim. Then all you need to do is
upload the IGC file, or an OLC claim file prepared offline with flight
analysis software, enter your aircraft info, and you are done. The
takeoff site is automaitcally selected, and your region is selected
from that.

StrePla also announced at the OLC Symposium yesterday that they have
released the 2007 patch for online claiming, so you can also do
automatic claims as before. SeeYou is still working on their patch, and
should release it soon as well.

Doug Haluza
SSA-OLC Admin