Time line last adjusted on 12-November-1998
- 24-May-1998
- Initialted project,
assigned Adam Mikeal to create initial database and explore strategies,
started to gather information necessary to implement system.
- 23-Jun-1998
- John Mcclain and Adam Mikeal met with Barbara Sloan to discuss
implementation barriers and structural flaws in the current system. It
was determined that there were inherent flaws and security holes, and
several changes would have to take place in the process of purchasing
items from the Mechanical or Electrical Shops. A partial list
includes: 1) Carolyn will no longer be verifying account numbers after
the purchace date - once the purchace is assigned an invoice and account
number it will not be feasable to change it. This assignment will occur in
the shop when the purchace takes place.
- 30-Jun-1998
- Completed structural base of system. Began process of designing
end-user interfaces and explored different design theories for user/data
integration.
- 1-July-1998
- It was determined that the current procedure of creating a single-item
invoice from the multiple-item invoices that are sent to Carolyn by the
Electrical and Mechanical Shops would no longer be necessary and the
database structure was altered to reflect this decision.
- 2-July-1998
- The security level of the forms that allow for entry, editing and
deletion of employees, account numbers, and products in the database was
discussed, and it was determined that the optimal solution was to
provide two sets of forms, on for administrators of the database that
would allow addition, editing, and deletion, and another for end-users
that would only allow addition of records.
- 15-July-1998
- Implemented first stages of on-line inventory for the Mechanical and
Electrical Shops. Since this inventory is contained in the Departmental
accounting database, instead of duplicating our efforts with an
additional database for the web site, we created Active Server Pages
(.asp) to dynamically generate the query results to the end user. The
database will reside on an NT machine so we will use Microsoft's MNDB
driver to serve out the data, as we are doing currently with this test
module. The test can be viewed at access.physics.tamu.edu/form/html (the
link at the bottom of the page).
- 6-Aug-1998
- Completed primary version of the database, including tables, queries,
forms, and some reports. End-user interfaces are still in development,
with revision suggestions being solicited from the end-users (Electrical
and Mechanical Shops, and clerical staff on 4th floor).
- 10-Sept-1998
- First major revision in database forms and reports. It was reported that serious errors were
occuring during the close-out period for August's billing cycle. Upon further investigation, it
was determined that the original stock data that was supplied by the Electrical Shop contained faulty data, causing those tables to have to be re-written. Approximately 500 invoices
were entered and calculated with the faulty data, and since all were not caught initially, the errors will
continue to show up for a few months. These errors can be corrected by re-entering the amount in
the 'Quantity' field in the 'Orders' form.
- 16-Oct-1998
- As additional information about the program and it's operational methods came in from the field, it
became apparent that the new method of one invoice per transaction (as opposed to one per month) was not
practical. I created a summary invoice that would generate an invoice similar to the one that the legacy
program had been creating.
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