What's the Coolest Application You Have Worked on?
I was doing some contract work at a local college (soon to be university). They, like many other colleges, used a commercial, off-the-shelf Oracle application to store student and course information. The athletic department wanted to keep track of student athletes on academic probation -- make sure they were attending class, doing homework assignments, etc. So they went to the Oracle team and asked them to build this application.
Oracle team: "How often are you going to use this application?"
Athletic dept: "Once or twice a semester."
Oracle team: "Okay, we'll add it to our list of projects."
Athletic dept: "When can I test this?"
Oracle team: "We'll let you know."
So the athletic department came to the Notes team.
Notes team: "Sure -- one SQL query for student athletes on probation, one SQL query for their courses, and then an email to their professors. Do you want out-of-season sports as well as in-season?"
Athletic dept: "Wow -- you can do all that? When can I test it?
Notes team: "2 weeks."
The application worked so well the Dean of Students expanded it to all students on academic probation. The really cool part is how easy it was to do with Notes -- accessing data from a non-Notes database, adding bits of information, adding some email notifications, and in much less time than the relational database people could do it in, if it ever became enough of a priority.
How about you? What's the coolest application you have worked on? By the way, if it is really cool, you might also want to enter it in the Teamstudio Spotlight Awards contest.
Oracle team: "How often are you going to use this application?"
Athletic dept: "Once or twice a semester."
Oracle team: "Okay, we'll add it to our list of projects."
Athletic dept: "When can I test this?"
Oracle team: "We'll let you know."
So the athletic department came to the Notes team.
Notes team: "Sure -- one SQL query for student athletes on probation, one SQL query for their courses, and then an email to their professors. Do you want out-of-season sports as well as in-season?"
Athletic dept: "Wow -- you can do all that? When can I test it?
Notes team: "2 weeks."
The application worked so well the Dean of Students expanded it to all students on academic probation. The really cool part is how easy it was to do with Notes -- accessing data from a non-Notes database, adding bits of information, adding some email notifications, and in much less time than the relational database people could do it in, if it ever became enough of a priority.
How about you? What's the coolest application you have worked on? By the way, if it is really cool, you might also want to enter it in the Teamstudio Spotlight Awards contest.
Category Application Development
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Comments
Even better is adding enhancements and bug fixes to the production system. (I know many will cringe at this but it's the cheapest way to go on non-critical systems. I'd never suggest it on a payroll system.)
The coolest (and most complex) system I worked on was an integrated litigation support system. This system automated the process of procuring documents for law suites. An entire company was built around this one application.
When they received an order they completed an order form with all the particulars about the suite. The added any number of locations from which the documents were to be subpoenaed. They added any number of opposing council as well.
They then clicked a generate button which caused a whole series of documents to be created based on the information entered. Kind of like a mail merge on steroids. This was all template driven. When they configured the system they created a template for each kind of document to be generated in each flavor; state and federal. Documents like subpoenas in many flavors, waver letters, cover letters, opposing council notifications, disposition questions, certifications, etc. There were further configuration templates that which the system used to know which set of documents to generate for a particular kind of suite.
Once the documents were generated, printed and sent, they had a phone bank that called to follow up. The system tracked these calls and maintained a call record and the status of each set of documents for each location. If there were errors that were discovered in the process such as a doctor moving to a new address, the data in the system was updated and a new set of documents generated, printed and sent.
The system also generated reports, updated hourly, accessible via password to the ordering firms on the web site. In this way the firm could ascertain the status of their order at any time.
This system operated successfully with few problems for six years until the company was acquired by another company and they switched over to another system.
Do date I think that is the most complex system I have created singlehandedly. It is also the only one I've done that was Notes Client based.
I billed at $100/hr and the initial working system cost them about $8000. Looking back I have to say that was a terrific bargain!
Peace,
Rob:-]
Posted by Rob At 12:40:57 PM On 10/28/2008 | - Website - |
Scott
Posted by Scott Johnsen At 03:06:53 PM On 10/28/2008 | - Website - |
He had used static forms for all the legal document generators. Every time they wanted to change any wording, he had to do it. I added the whole template driven idea for the documents and to configure the document sets. I made almost everything user modifiable without design changes.
So for once one programmer got to stand on the shoulders of another. We usually just stand on each others' feet.
I'm just sorry they didn't want to develop it further. I wanted to integrate the billing into the system but they just wanted to use it how it was.
Over the years the one database was getting pretty full so I persuaded them to let me build an archiving system for them. This was tricky because even if they had finished an order they wanted all the record on-line until the case was concluded, which could take many years.
Once a week it would copy any new records to the archive database, being careful to preserve the UNID of the document. It would also copy any changed data to existing documents in the archive.
After that step it would scan every order to determine if all the locations for that order were in a terminal state such as "billed & delivered" or "Canceled". If so the order was marked as eligible for archiving and would show up in the "Archivable" view.
At their leisure they would examine the orders in this view and mark the ones they wanted to archive. When the archive agent ran the next week it would copy all changes and then just delete any documents marked for archiving.
In this way they always had a full backup each week. If they did something silly like delete an order or parts of an order they could just copy the archived document and paste it back into the production database. Because I had preserved the UNIDs everything linked up perfectly even though many documents referenced others via UNIDs.
That was a five hour job, as I recall.
So do you think I should submit one (or more) of these to the Spotlight award contest? (I miss Configurator from when I worked an Motorola and bought the whole suite for our Notes department.)
Peace,
Rob:-]
Posted by Rob At 12:16:02 AM On 10/30/2008 | - Website - |
Scott
Posted by Scott Johnsen At 01:50:21 PM On 11/04/2008 | - Website - |