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Windows Incompatibilities Frustrate D.C. Schools
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."
...for not properly researching what they were going to use. A little time before can save a lot of time after.
"Unix hardware"?
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
The experimental warning applied to older 1.3.x versions and systems running Windows 9x/Me.
A different operating system that is NOT Windows...?
How long until Microsoft swoops in with salesmen and faulty TCO numbers to convince this county's school board to go all-MS?
After all, there wouldn't be these problems if the schools were using Windows XP workstations accessing MS-SQL servers running alongside Windows Server 2003 Enterprise IIS webservers. Right?
Because we all know it's cheaper that way, right? Right?
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
In my experience it is more often bad management that causes problems, regardless of the underlying technology (good or bad).
as more people feel the consequences of Microsoft's lock-in policies. It is becoming apparent to more and more people that when one uses any Microsoft system or app, Microsoft controls your information and your IT decisions.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Inexperienced IT professionals find it frustrating setting up systems they have never set up before...
Dog Bites Man...
And the Sun will probably come up tomorrow... God willing.
Stayed tuned for more "News for Nerds... Stuff that matters."
I sure the hell hope you are right! But, I think the only way that will ever happen is if schools start using OSX and linux a lot more. The biggest reason people use windows is because they are used to it, and getting people get used to the alternatives will really help.
Of course the fact that almost all PC's come with Windows installed doesn't help the problem either. At least the other OS's now have passable support for most hardware as well as a somewhat competitive application library now.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Why is it always Linux or OSX? What about BSD, huh? What if they put a UNIX OS on that UNIX hardware of theirs. Or what about Syllable, or SkyOS? *grin*
How much time and money did they spend on a system without, apparently, having first determined if the various bits would play nicely together? How did they manage to get to the point of going live without testing? Why did the CIO discover fundamental issues only after system failures? Just who are these folks and why do they still have jobs?
Schools are always griping about how they are underfunded, well maybe if you didn't spend tens of thousands JUST on MS-Office site licenses alone, never mind Windows OS, you could be saving a bundle!
The schools are run by the boards of education, so the people in charge there need to hear and understand the open source message. Stop grovelling at the feet of Microsoft already!
Meh.
Ok,
they are running apache on windows I guess then? And that's the problem? Why are they running windows on "Unix Hardware"? What is "Unix hardware"? I can only assume they mean a Sun box? I didn't know Windows had a sparc version! I bet that's really awesome!
Anyway, from reading the article I get the impression that neither the interviewer nor the people interviewed have enough technical background to describe the problems accurately, much less fix them. The people interviewed are all managers who probably don't know the difference between c++ and VB, couldn't tell you what an OS actually is, or understand the difference between hardware and software (apparently).
In short, the story is that some managers who don't understand technology and were trying to deploy an apparently advanced web service for an entire school district never bothered to read the documentation of the software they were deploying, and then ran into trouble... I guess that's interesting, or news, or something..
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>In the past week, a number of students found mistakes in their class schedules because of glitches in the computer system, which is called D.C. STARS and is designed to handle attendance, grading and the calculation of graduation and dropout rates, among other functions. School officials said at the time that the problem affected about 5 percent of secondary students.
This looks more like a problem with bad software than with the underlying operating system. The article doesn't list any actual problem they have with Windows.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Windows is the best operating system of choice for every situation. But provide actual facts as to the problems. "Underlying infrastructure" is too abstract to be of any use to anyone.
As for Apache on Windows... it works fine for me. I can't provide technological sources to disprove what the article says but my personal experiences with it have always been fine.
In my experience, the combination of an Oracle database, Windows operating system, Unix hardware and an Apache webserver is a bad combination
Good job getting windows to work on "Unix Hardware", I never thought that was possible.
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.
Research first, then act. Dumbass.
Brady and Barlow said yesterday that employees at some schools were experiencing slowness with the system. But they denied that any school had been unable to use the system for a prolonged period.
That can be from any number of problems. Heavy loads are 1st, but that could stem from incompetence which could explain this whole problem.
Barlow said officials plan to replace Windows with a different operating system.
Well if you're "running" it on "Unix Hardware", then switching won't help since nobody knows what is going on anyway.
"The system has been slow the last couple of days; it's been off and on," Tarason said.
That happens with all systems, no matter what platform if you don't have the right people managing it. (Dupe comment too).
"Instead of the technology helping, it could be a hindrance," Roy said.
Technology is only a tool. I like to think of it as a simple filter or mathematical equation in which if you put crap in, crap will come out. It's not a magic box that makes everything right even if monkeys are pushing the buttons.
Sorry if this came off like a flame, but the article lacks any real information.
Given that the problem here is caused by Apache not functioning properly on Windows, shouldn't the headline be "Apache Incompatibilities Frustrate D.C. Schools?" Hell, given that the Apache programmers have been always made it abundantly clear that Apache does not work right on Windows, the title should really be "Idiotic choices by systems engineers frustrate D.C. schools?"
It's pretty pathetic that leading Linux evangelists have to go this far to come up with an anti-Windows story, but it should make Microsoft feel better that they do.
They had to put Windows up there to make it a valid Slashdot article. It wouldn't have been posted otherwise.
Leave it to Slashdot to take an article that shows complete incompetency on the part of the journalist and those interviewed, and make it a problem about Windows.
-David
The configuration is time-consuming and error-prone
What the fuck are you talking about? The configuration is the same as it is under Unix.
The PHP-monkeys make sure the Windows-binaries are released at the same time that the source is released, to make their Windows-audience feel like they are worth something.
MySQL is just a bad database.
It's can be a real problem to set up Apache on Windows.
Actually, with the current installer, installing Apache on Windows is brain dead easy. Getting MySQL (4.1) running under windows isn't rocket science, but getting PHP (5) to talk to MySQL in that environment is a pain the first time or two.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
You know what I see when I scroll through the comments to this article?
Some people pointing out that this is essentially not a Windows problem but a management/sysadmin/apache problem, and some others saying "look at all the Linux zealots!"
Linux zealots? Where?
Sure, the story poster may not have seen clearly what was going on, but then again, the article was written by the ignorant interviewing the ignorant, so who can blame them for having the wrong opinion.
I'm sick and tired of people trolling on the biases of the Slashdot crowd, only to have the highest moderated posts betray the fact that they are really just speaking of their own biases.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Precisely why you shouldn't be installing a web server. If you don't even know the name of the keys, please keep your badly configured servers off the internet.
That said, don't run Word to edit text files. I just opened Wordpad and entered the number "1" as the text. No numbers, no carriage returns. Just the number one. 158 bytes. The following is the text in the file I saved:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl {\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}}
{\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1507;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 1\par
}
Shame on Apache for not compensating for this gross inefficiency in their config parser.
'Slashdot headlines frustrate readers'
I have 3 words for this article:
WAKE UP EDITORS.
It clearly states Windows isn't at fault, so WHY must you put this 'Windows causes all problems, no matter what the article REALLY says' spin on everything AS OFTEN as you can? Grow up, and get some journalistic integrity.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
They did exactly the right thing.
You don't choose an OS and then choose your main-line applications.
You choose the applications you need to run, in order to get whatever job you need done, and then you choose an operating system based on those applications.
In this case, they want or need Apache as a web server. That's a fine, defensible choice. It's popular. It's pretty easy to find support on it, even without a contract. Most sysadmins are familiar with it. It has a good track record. Etc.
They also want Oracle -- exactly why they'd want to do this I'm not sure, but they do. Fine.
Based on that, they should review their choice of an operating system. And from that, they should determine their hardware requirements. Absent of a lot of legacy applications or something which predetermine the OS and hardware decision, there isn't any reason why a person should pick a OS before they choose their software. That's just backwards.
Basically, it sounds like someone just was slightly lazy and didn't want to make the tough call and tell their bosses that they needed a new operating system for their server, and now they're paying the price. Perhaps that's a result of their institutional culture, I don't know. But it sounds like they finally understood that they went the wrong way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Here's the real incompatibility: Combining Unix, Apache, Oracle, Windows, *AND* the DC School System.
I'm not a system admin, Oracle expert, or network guru, and I've gotten his combination up and running many times. Okay, it isn't painless and I find it a bit frustrating, but then again, setting this stuff up isn't technically my job.
Now, the DC school system is something else. They couldn't get two tin cans and a piece of string to network together. Compared to the DC government bureaucracy, the Somalian National Government is more organized and better run.
Stupid & lame people working under more stupid & lame people. Same story all over again.
:(
If the actual IT people were worth even a dime, they'd try deploying on GNU/Linux or one of BSDs, if it really didn't work on Windows as they claim. They could simply agree between each other that they won't tell the management because the management is clueless anyway. And the management doesn't ask questions if things work, most of the time that is. I mean, will those school district types ever look at the server console during bootup to make sure that what boots up is actually Windoze? C'mon, to me it all looks like a total lack of problem solving skills. The IT people should get the stuff working vs. idly complaining to the management "gee whiz we ran into trouble, boss".
To me it looks like the IT guys were clueless and just couldn't solve the problem, so they relegated the blame onto an open source project. And the media just love it, because -- like usual -- the media weren't any wiser than the dumb IT people. It's pretty sad.
This is pathetic to the n^th power, like always when politics get involved
Disclaimer:
The assumption is that the application itself is written in something platform-neutral, which might or might not be the case. Then still, there can be ways to make the web/db server run on a unix box, and just the application to run on Windoze. And so on. I don't/won't believe they really faced insurmountable obstacles.
It is apparent you have no real-life experience daling with or managing relations between large organizations and large contractors.
Communication difficulties are not equivalent to learning disabilities. If that is what your shcool teaches, perhaps you ought to leave it.
In any case, i said nothing about communications, I said contractors did not understand the natrue of their customer's work or how their deliverables would actually be used by the customer's employees. I explicity did not say contractor personnel and government personnel had problems communicating with each other.
Nor did I mean to say the use of contrctors was a bad idea. Just the opposite. The government personnel involved did not possess the skills or the time to develop complex multi-million dollar IT systems. Nor do any organizations that hire contractors. The contractor acknolwedges that by employing specialists in ascertaining the customer's needs. The customer expresses those needs in terms the customers understands, and it is the contractor's responsibility to translate those expressions into engineering requirements that result in the creation of deliverables that do what the customer wants them to do.
All this is self-evidently logical. One doesn't blame the homeowner if the house designed by the architect doesn't do what the homeowner told the architect it should do.
I'm not blaming outsiders. The contractors were inside and they were planners. That's what they were paid to do: Listen to what we say we need and go off and plan, design and deliver a system that does just that.
In my experience, many techs are happiest in a world ruled by the engineering principles they apply in their work. That's why they like their work and why they are good at it. But people do not behave according ot engineering principles. They change their minds. They have budget problems. They have superiors who direct them to make changes in otherwise admirable programs. I've found that techs, particularly journeymen non-managerial techs, often have difficulty dealing with that world and come off as abrasive, arrogant and incooperative. They fail to live by the truism that the customer is always right. To give a specific example, I can't begin to count the times some low-level coder told me something could not be changed, only to see it changed quickly once I went over his head.
Again, I have not been describing a communication problem. Communciations were excellent. I am describing the contractors' failure to deliver products that did what their customers said they wanted them to do. If, in fact, the contractor had problems understanding the ogvernment, it was the cntractors' responsibility to know that and to do something about. Money flowed from the government to the contractor, and responsiblity flowed the other way.
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