[stamp] Re: Features list (webmaster@spamrobotics.com)
- From: Brandon Ripley <Brandon.Ripley@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'stamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <stamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 11:31:22 -0500
Thanks for the feedback Jon, excellent points. I've added comments below,
hopefully they show up in blue : )
Brandon
I see a few problems happening. What if a team is using the internet at
a hotel and the ports are blocked or something? There should be
connection settings.
Since this is a web application, it only uses the usual port 80 for
internet traffic, so if web browsing is enabled, this shouldn't be a
problem.
Also, what happens if data is being transfered to
the server and over-writing someone's old data and the person looses an
internet connection? Will both sets of data be lost or made unusable? A
backup should probably be kept on the server in case a transfer fails.
Also, allow a way for the data to be saved to a disk on the client's end.
This definitely is an issue and should be addressed by implementation. If a
dozen people are scouting on the same server, there has to be some way to
figure out what data to save and how. If each team has their own database
for scouting, that alleviates some of the issue of overwriting data because
only a couple people on that team will be scouting and they can figure out
among themselves who is responsible for what robots and how data is entered.
Though we should put in some controls such that if one person is scouting
red alliance and one is scouting blue alliance, the red scouter can't enter
data for the blue alliance and vice versa. Also, that should be done down to
the robot level where each person is responsible for a number of robots.
That way you don't have two people unknowingly entering points twice for one
robot or alliance. How about at the beginning of the match each user selects
who he/she will be scouting and subsequent scouters will not have the option
of selecting to scout those teams?
Now for uploading data from your server to an internet server. This will
have to be done through a web interface so ports aren't a problem. How about
this, the application can create a large text dump to a webpage of all the
match and team data stored on the local server. (This HTML file could then
be saved locally on any computer as a backup) At the top of the page will be
a field to enter the address of the server and database to upload to and the
username password with access to do so. On clicking submit all the data in
the fields is sent to the script on the internet server in one large form.
The internet server will parse the data and add it to its database one item
at a time. If there was an incomplete upload and some of the fields already
contain data, the data should match, but if it doesn't the internet server
should dump a page back to the user listing all the discrepancies in an
appropriate context so hopefully they can be remedied. Though once the
change is remedied, the internet server is correct and the local server may
still have the discrepancy. There should then also be a similar function for
copying the data back to the local server but in that case, all the data on
the local server is overwritten with the data from the internet server. That
can probably be automated in with the uploading of data to the internet
server.
Also, maybe a print function so if a team wants to print a list of all
teams in oder by rank or order by name or number, they could.
Yes
Maybe if they could somehow export the information to an Excel
spreadsheet, they
could then customize the information and add columns before printing.
The rankings page should allow for sorting on the fields of data collected
(points scored, functionality, penalties, etc) and weighting the fields to
attain a best-fit alliance choice. I don't know what other columns one would
want to add because there won't have been any data collected to fill that
column if it isn't already in the rankings page. None the less, there should
be an export to Excel or the format should be conducive to copying and
pasting directly into an Excel spreadsheet so teams can customize the
information. Whatever teams do with Excel should be fed back to the project
so it can be incorporated into the next revision so Excel doesn't have to
necessarily be used.
What if a team wants to store their data on their own server, maybe if
they trust it more or just have plenty of space?
Yes, that needs to be possible. We don't plan on having an internet
connection in the stands at the competition, so all the data will be stored
on the server we bring along and have sitting with us (at this point it is
only a 266 laptop running Linux).
That's a few of my ideas. Hope it helps.
-Jon
Web Site Team Leader
S.P.A.M. Robotics - FRC Team 180
http://spamrobotics.com/ <http://spamrobotics.com/>
2005 Web Site Excellence Award Winner
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