Development Tools & Resources - Rants and Raves

This section will describe the major problems we had with our development tools and resources. Our main development tool was Logic Works 4.0 by Capilano Computing. Logic Works will be referred to as LW4 throughout this page. Much of our technical work was done at Capilano College computing labs. Our design specifications and references were provided by Wadanet network.

Given our limited resources, we make do with what we have. And we really had to! We've seperated our development resources into three categories. They are listed below.

1. Hardware - The Capilano College computing lab computers
2. Web Resources - The Wadanet network
3. Software - Logic Works 4
   

The problems that we found with each of these areas will be discussed below. We follow up with a satisfaction rating using smileys. One smiley is the lowest, and five smileys is the best.

Capilano College Computer Systems

Partial Specifications:
Win 2000
Intel P3 500+
128MB RAM
Seanix Monitors
File saved over network

The WIN2000 platform was not very stable. Whenever the computer froze, we would have to reboot. But when we press the RESET switch, the startup process freezes halfway through. We spend a considerable amount of time waiting for computers to restart and such. Afterwards, we just pulled the plug out of the back, and plugged it back in. This was the only effective way of doing a clean reboot.

Although the computers are P3 class systems, their performance is limited by the measly 128MB RAM. Nowadays, RAM is so cheap. Considering the types of applications we're running, and with a memory hungry system like WIN2000, additional memory would've been a plus. Again, this added to the tormenting waiting period.

The monitors were 17", and this was a bonus because it allowed us to see more of what we're doing. But, there are only about 3 monitors in a lab of 30 computers that are not faulty. What's wrong with the others? They become blurry. First, you would think that you've been in front of a computer too long, and you're just getting tired. But whoa! The screen is actually getting blurry. Then you end up getting a headache, dizziness, and sometimes you'll feel nauseous. It really doesn't help the thinking process.

We have storage space assigned to us over a network. What happens when the network goes down? Well, we can't access them and that means we go on vacation. There were a number of times when the network traffic really affected our work. If the network was slow, we would just wait for things to complete. We realized that it was better to copy files over to the local computer, complete our tasks, and then copy it back.

There is also a firewall preventing us from doing any type of FTP to this web site. That made transferring large files a nightmare since floppy disks wouldn't work.

Rating: 2 / 5 smileys.

Wadanet Network Web Resources

The design specifications and reference material are available online at Wadanet Network. If you can't access the site, then it must be down. How frequent was this? Early in the term it was down a lot. At this time, the Wadanet site was being transferred from SHAW to TELUS. I'm not going to discuss the reasons for this, but I'll just mention that SHAW was giving our client tremendous problems.

The transition to TELUS definitely was not smooth. There were breakdowns in communications between SHAW, TELUS, and the domain name registrar. Anyways, we weren't able to access the site by typing www.wadanet.com. We had to use an IP address. We also had a problem with the IP address changing on us. Eventually, everything was resolved, but this was into February already.

Beyond that, my local computer had problems accessing www.wadanet.com. Instead, I had to type in the IP address of the site. Thus, I created a mirror site at http://members.shaw.ca/cs212/.

One-third into the term, the Wadanet network was stable. But I sometimes I had problems accessing it. I still don't know why. I've contacted my local provider, and they weren't any help.

Rating: 3 / 5 smileys.