Oracle based Web Development for Ingenta ltd (2000-2002)

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Oracle based Web Development for Ingenta ltd
(2000-2002)

• For the Bristol University Information Services
  Presentation
• 17/01/2003

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Introduction.

• This project was a major software development
  undertaken by Ingenta ltd for the Macmillan
  publishing group
• The ultimate goal of the project was to develop
  two websites hosting academic journals, news
  articles and online communities
• These sites are www.ency-astro.com and
  www.els.net, the Encyclopaedia's of Astronomy
  and Astrophysics and of the Life Sciences
• My role in this project was to be the sole Oracle
  designer and developer in a 20-strong development
  team

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Development Project Description

• These websites features include- Searchable
  repositories of xml and .pdf based journals,
  links to other related sites, workgroups, news
  articles, dictionaries and a thesaurus
• Both websites launched successfully and on-time,
  despite many technical and personnel-oriented
  hurdles during the development stage
• After the second site was launched, the first
  site was subsequently re-engineered to
  incorporate those technical enhancements
  discovered during the development of the second
  one

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My Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths
• 5 years Oracle and general relational database
  design and development experience
• Weaknesses
• No prior knowledge of new Oracle 8i features,
  Intermedia, or XML
• Very little prior knowledge of E-commerce or web
  development
• This was the first time I had been the solitary
  Oracle resource in a development project, having
  previously always been part of a team of Oracle
  specialists

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Technology

• New technology being used
• Latest features of Oracle 8i including Intermedia
  text searching, hit-highlighting, domain indexes,
  LOB datatypes, etc
• The XML XSQL-servlet, new to Oracle 8i in 8.1.6
• The XML parser for PL/SQL
• Standards adopted
• Ingenta standards include UML and SSADM
• LOB Large OBject
• XML eXtended Markup Language a derivation of
  SGML
• UML Unified Modelling Language
• SSADM Structured Systems Analysis and Design
  Methodology

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Team/Resources

• The Macmillan team comprised about 20 individuals
  in total- A project manager, 4 Java developers,
  a technical lead, an Oracle database resource
  (me!), a couple of business analysts and a number
  of HTML specialists
• The development equipment included Pentium 3
  desktop PCs, Sun Solaris serversseparate
  development, test and hosting boxes and a Linux
  server
• All development and hosting took place at the
  Ingenta head offices in Bath
• I received invaluable technical assistance from
  Steve Muench, USA based Oracle Evangelist and Lee
  Dodds, XML guru and member of the W3C

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Problems Encountered

• Ingenta used contractors for their project
  managers and the project was disrupted by the
  continuity issues caused by 3 changes of manager
• The first manager was highly efficient and in
  control of the project. The second was totally
  passive and effectively did little more than
  smile at the clients and let each developer
  manage their own workload. The third went to the
  other extreme and held FAR too many unnecessary
  and lengthy progress meetings on a daily basis.
  Ironically, progress was severely hampered by the
  regularity of these progress meetings!
• There was an extremely large turnover in staff at
  Ingenta. By launch date, I was the only one left
  on the project who had been there from its
  inception!

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Technical Obstacles

• There were no manuals or books available to
  describe how to deploy the XSQLservlet within
  Oracle
• The XSQLservlet was also beta-test only, hence
  not supported by Oracle. Therefore, I was often
  unable to get answers to technical issues from
  the Oracle support staff
• The size of the XML files we needed to load were
  larger than the maximum variable allowed in
  PLSQL. This meant that I could not use the PLSQL
  XML parser, having to switch to the JAVA parser
  (I had no JAVA knowledge at this point)
• The Oracle tablespaces available on the
  development server (Solaris) were insufficient
  for testing needs. Additionally, the machine was
  too old and slow
• The sample data supplied by Macmillan ltd was
  invariably dirty or corrupt. It typically
  contained numerous spurious characters and often
  violated the XML DTD

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Final Status of the Project

• The project was in the main a success
• The sites both launched on-time with 100
  functionality and no major bugs, also delivery
  deadlines were met
• The complex searches were found to be far slower
  than was desirable when the ELS site went live,
  so I was sent on an Oracle tuning workshop and
  had to hastily rewrite them to be more efficient
• Despite this successful delivery, Macmillan
  pulled the plug on plans to offer subsequent
  development projects to Ingenta ltd. This was
  probably because of staff turnover
• Both websites are still running to this day,
  using both the databases I designed and the PLSQL
  functions I developed

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Advanced Search Page from ELS
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Search Results Page from ELS
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Search Results from EAA
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Image of Saturns Rings