November 15, 2006
How HISD gets its tech support

You've probably heard about HISD's software problems. How should the fix this? Well, they could try calling Technology Bytes for help. Fighting Jay Lee (none more surly than he) has an imagined conversation between the Geek Radio folks and Dr. Abelard Saavedra. It's funny stuff, so check it out.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 15, 2006 to General snarkiness | TrackBack
Comments

Chancery's issue is that the database has too many things to do. The code was written in a theoretical way and when actual usage came into play it got bogged down doing the many tasks it was supposed to do. They've been debugging the code and scaling down the load. It should have been vetted a bit more before it won the winning bid, but the system will do much more than the AS400 1980's based system, eventually. Remember, $14 million was used to buy new computers for every instructor in HISD, a needed improvement. The network, workstations and servers run fine, the bottle neck is at the database report loads.

Posted by: OLd$K00L on November 15, 2006 1:13 PM

Chancery is a joy to behold. I got to behold it for hours and hours and hours, as I tried to enter grades. It was taking, on average, about 2 minutes per grade. I have 180 students. We were all using school-inappropriate vocabulary by the end of the process. The next progress report goes in after Thanksgiving. Here's hoping (ha, ha) that the bugs have been exterminated.

Posted by: Dema Solberg on November 15, 2006 9:08 PM