[Deploying Sakai] Call for feedback on Upgrade Bundle technical requirements/design

[Ray Davis]

FWIW, I completely understand John's reaction, and if I hadn't been 
tracking the increase in upgrade difficulty from the inside, and then 
had the unpleasant experience of trying a few upgrades in practice (one 
of which necessitated a complete data wipe), I too might push against 
those requirements. It'll be great if someone on the project team 
figures out a way to trim them down. Unfortunately, I think it's just a 
debt we have to pay.

(Disclaimer: Like John and Eli, I'm an interested party rather than a 
member of the project team.)

Best,
Ray

On 9/10/11 8:43 AM, John Norman wrote:
> OK, I'm going to stop here. I am not challenging the desirability of a
> data upgrade service and I am certainly not challenging "...we need a
> process where all changes like this and more serious ones can be
> captured, documented and migration code written". When I looked at the
> specification work, I got the impression of a two people for 3 months
> sort of project and I wasn't sure that would be the biggest priority for
> that level of investment right now, given the resource available and the
> other things that need to get done. Thus the call for triage, to do the
> minimum for now so we can get other things done. I am not qualified to
> do the specification - that needs to come from the development team.
> Priority setting from the team leads and project manager.
>
> I'll leave it there.
>
> John
>
> On 10 Sep 2011, at 15:54, Eli Cochran wrote:
>
>> John,
>> I agree that we should do this in stages. Could you elaborate a bit on
>> which use cases you feel are "basic" and which you think are "nice to
>> haves". I'm sure that would help Chris some up with a plan that
>> properly scopes the project.
>>
>> I know that upgrading is very critical to the pilot institutions. The
>> way that OAE stores data makes it very easy to introduce seemingly
>> minor changes to the data that result in user facing errors and
>> problems. For example, a very small change to the UI to turn-off
>> permissions on categories in personal profiles never surfaced for our
>> users because it required a tiny data migration. Luckily we caught it
>> in QA. (I'm not grumbling, we went to production before 1.0 so that's
>> life.) Now that we are at 1.0 and a number of institutions are in
>> production, we need a process where all changes like this and more
>> serious ones can be captured, documented and migration code written.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Eli
>>
>> On Sep 10, 2011, at 1:26 AM, John Norman wrote:
>>
>>> I'd like to see the problem structured a bit more into stages. It
>>> seems to me that there are some basic things that are needed
>>> immediately, but others that are potentially nice to have and apply
>>> to scenarios that we don't yet experience. Manual upgrades are a
>>> pain, but I am not sure how much return on investment this work would
>>> produce compared to other priorities.
>>>
>>> J
>>>
>>> On 6 Sep 2011, at 19:01, Eli Cochran wrote:
>>>
>>>> Adding the OAE Pilot Support Group and the front-end devs to this
>>>> thread.
>>>>
>>>> This was one of the high priorities for the pilot support group.
>>>>
>>>> - Eli
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>
>>>>> *From: *Chris Tweney <chris at media.berkeley.edu
>>>>> <mailto:chris at media.berkeley.edu>>
>>>>> *Date: *September 2, 2011 2:52:11 PM PDT
>>>>> *To: *Nakamura List <sakai-kernel at googlegroups.com
>>>>> <mailto:sakai-kernel at googlegroups.com>>
>>>>> *Subject: **[sakai-nakamura] Call for feedback on Upgrade Bundle
>>>>> technical requirements/design*
>>>>> *Reply-To: *sakai-kernel at googlegroups.com
>>>>> <mailto:sakai-kernel at googlegroups.com>
>>>>>
>>>>> Nakamurians,
>>>>>
>>>>> In the spirit of open community and participation and all those
>>>>> good things, I want to solicit input on requirements for an Upgrade
>>>>> Bundle. This is the long-awaited tool that will provide a uniform,
>>>>> reliable, decoupled framework for tweaking data structures from one
>>>>> release to the next.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've put down a sketchy technical requirements/design at [1].
>>>>>
>>>>> Please have a look and offer your feedback on list!
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> -chris
>>>>>
>>>>> [1]
>>>>> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/KERNDOC/KERN-2147+Upgrade+bundle
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Chris Tweney, Senior Software Developer
>>>>> Educational Technology Services
>>>>> University of California, Berkeley
>>>>> chris at media.berkeley.edu <mailto:chris at media.berkeley.edu>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>>>
>>>> Eli Cochran
>>>> project manager, Cal*Central* project
>>>> Educational Technology Services, U.C. Berkeley
>>>>
>>>> "Software is hard" - Donald Knuth
>>>>
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>>>
>>> John Norman
>>> Director - CARET
>>> University of Cambridge
>>> john at caret.cam.ac.uk <mailto:john at caret.cam.ac.uk>
>>> +44-1223-765367
>>>
>>
>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>
>> Eli Cochran
>> User Interaction Developer &
>> Manager of User Experience Design
>> Educational Technology Services, UC Berkeley
>>
>> "The opportunity lost by increasing the amount of blank space is
>> gained back with enhanced attention to what remains."
>> - John Maeda
>>
>>
>>
>
> John Norman
> Director - CARET
> University of Cambridge
> john at caret.cam.ac.uk <mailto:john at caret.cam.ac.uk>
> +44-1223-765367
>
>
>
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