OLC?

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

Mike

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

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.

yea and they still havent posted my flights after i sent them copies of
the barograph trace and landing witness signatures!

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.

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

Doug Haluza schrieb:
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.

I can assure you that some of the information you got there was not
correct.

The old software was a C-code written by myself and JK, plus a
mySql-database, which stored all the information, plus lots of php-code
written by CH, AR for all the displays and scorings and a third person
for the BHC.

Impossible to maintain and dead end? Yes, if you remove the two lead
persons within 6 month form the project.

Have a look at sis-at.streckenflug.at to see the dead end of this
technology ;-)
The team for sis-at are CH, one new person, and myself and JK helping us
out with the maps and baros.

And we do distributed development, like in the old days of the OLC, now
only between Vienna and Munich, in the days of the OLC it was Munich,
Vienna, Constance, and Hamburg.


Doug Haluza
SSA-OLC Admin

hans wrote:

[....]

Have a look at sis-at.streckenflug.at to see the dead end of this
technology ;-)
The team for sis-at are CH, one new person, and myself and JK helping us
out with the maps and baros.

And we do distributed development, like in the old days of the OLC, now
only between Vienna and Munich, in the days of the OLC it was Munich,
Vienna, Constance, and Hamburg.


Hans,

I look forward to an English version for the undereducated Ausländer
(that would be me).


Jack

hans wrote:
Doug Haluza schrieb:
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.

I can assure you that some of the information you got there was not
correct.

Well, I was speaking in English to native German speakers, so something
may have been lost in translation, but I think it was substantially
correct. Obviously there is some history here that I am not aware of,
though.

The old software was a C-code written by myself and JK, plus a
mySql-database, which stored all the information, plus lots of php-code
written by CH, AR for all the displays and scorings and a third person
for the BHC.

Impossible to maintain and dead end? Yes, if you remove the two lead
persons within 6 month form the project.

I did not say it was impossible to maintain--in fact I said it was
functional. I did say it was not possible to support properly with a
distributed team. Many things can be done, but that does not mean they
should be done. If you are working with a distributed team, especially
an all-volunteer team, a modular architecture allows you to parse out
tasks, and decouple the separate activities.

Have a look at sis-at.streckenflug.at to see the dead end of this
technology ;-)
The team for sis-at are CH, one new person, and myself and JK helping us
out with the maps and baros.

And we do distributed development, like in the old days of the OLC, now
only between Vienna and Munich, in the days of the OLC it was Munich,
Vienna, Constance, and Hamburg.

It is possible to do distributed development on a monolithic block of
code, but it is not possible to work both simultaneously and
independently as you can with a modular architecture. Obviously the
modular architecture of OLC 2.0 will help the OLC developers to explore
new possibilities, once the basic functions are stable.

Doug Haluza
SSA-OLC Admin

Why do we complain about something that is free?

I've only had one pitiful little flight since the new
and improved OLC has come to fruition and I posted
it as always: through the OLC web page, since I don't
have SeeMe or StraightPlop. It took me several tries
to get it to accept the flight. Could be that I was
uploading on Sunday for a Saturday flight and I had
not changed the drop down calendar to Saturday? I
don't know what I did to make it go, but it finally
'took.'

I did find it MUCH easier to load than previously.
I think all I had to give was my name, birthdate,
type of glider, and upload the file. I didn't have
to pick the starting time, the ending time, the region
of flight, and maybe something else.

I think it looks promising as far as uploading the
flight directly through their OLC web page.

But I do think the white background on the map without
any turnpoints shown is a loss from what we used to
have. Maybe they are working on that? Wouldn't it
be fun if they linked the gps logs to Google Earth?
No, that wouldn't work too well for dial up modems.
Well, I bet they are cooking up something for the
background 'picture.'

For a free service, I still think it's pretty darned
cool!

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
Looking forward to yet another pitiful little flight
this weekend!
(Spring can't get here fast enough!)

Ray Lovinggood wrote:
Why do we complain about something that is free?

It's not free. It's just that the contestants don't pay. Somebody pays
-- and they are not getting their money's worth, when contestants are
frustrated and new people avoid joining as a result of the continuing
difficulties.

Somebody is doing a lot of work on it, no doubt, but their guiding
principles could use a dose of reality.


Jack