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Windows Incompatibilities Frustrate D.C. Schools

Posted by Zonk on from the look-at-the-label-first dept.

capouch writes "The Washington Post reports that school administrators for the DC public school system are having an awful time getting their new administrative software to work properly." From the article: "'In my experience, the combination of an Oracle database, Windows operating system, Unix hardware and an Apache webserver is a bad combination,' Barlow wrote in the memo to Thomas M. Brady, the school system's chief business operations officer. 'In fact, through our research the last few days, we have found an advisory on the Apache website that states, 'Please note that at this time, Windows support is entirely experimental and is recommended only for experienced users.' The Apache Group does not guarantee that the software will work as documented or even at all...Barlow said officials plan to replace Windows with a different operating system."

2 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. Not Corruption, But Poor Contractor Performance by reallocate · · Score: 4, Informative

    It takes two to tango. Contractors cause more problems than their government clients.

    In a former life I was a government employee deeply involved in bringing several IT systems online, from writing requirements to staff training to getting rid of something we didn't like.

    Corruption of government employees was not an issue. Lack of research by government wasn't an issue.

    The biggest single problem I saw was the creation of inadequate requirement specs. I saw this happen over and over for two reasons: 1) Governmenr employees lacked the technological backgrounded needed to express their needs in terms that their IT contractors could understand; 2) Contractors, especially those hired to help write the requirements, lacked awareness of their clients business needs and processes.

    So, in effect, the government knew what it wanted to do but not how to translate that into a requirements doc, and the contractors did not know very much, and did not want to know very much, about the work done by their client. As a result contractors threw assorted pieces of their IT catalog against business processes they only vaguely understood.

    I don't know how it works in DC, but in my environment, it would have been the contractor's responsibility to check the Apache website for that caveat about the Windows version. That's what they're paid to do.

    --
    -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
  2. Re:Some windows problems by Mattintosh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Quite true. But once you've done it at least once and distilled the actual need-to-do tasks from the process, it's about a 15-minute job.

    1) Install Apache with the MSI installer. Do not reboot (it doesn't ask, so no problem).
    2) Install PHP from the ZIP archive. Just unzip it to C:\PHP (or C:\PHP5 for even less config editing)
    3) Install MySQL with the MSI installer. DO NOT REBOOT (yet).
    4) Run through the MySQL Config Wizard when asked (at the end of the install).
    5) Set the DocumentRoot and any VirtualHosts you want in the Apache config. It works just like other platforms.
    6) Copy and rename the php.ini-recommended file to just php.ini. Set the doc_root and extension_root (extension root should be "./ext") settings, and uncomment (remove the semicolon) "extension=php_mysql.dll" and uncomment or add (if it's not there) "extension=php_mysqli.dll".
    7) Find the PHP install.txt file. Find your system/HTTP server/version combination and add the lines they say to the end of the Apache config. There should be 2 or 3 lines. A copy/paste will suffice.
    8) Right-click My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables... Now, on the bottom half of the dialog box are the environment variables for everyone (your user-specific ones are at the top). Find the one called "PATH" (not case sensitive, but is usually all upper-case) and add ;c:\php (or php5, if you named it that way).
    9) Reboot. The environment variables aren't updated unless you reboot.

    It's not a walk in the park, but after the first time and figuring out just where stuff is, it's pretty easy for a techie. Another note: I added stuff about VirtualHosts in Apache above, but didn't mention that you'll need to set up DNS entries or mess with your hosts file to get those to work. You can just skip the VirtualHosts if you don't know how to configure them. The rest of it will still work.