Subject: FW: [Moderator Action] litmus test, dangers of

From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:13:49 -0700

Accidentally caught by the spam filter.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Lowney [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 6:23 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Moderator Action] litmus test, dangers of

I am trying to convince the sysadmins of our University System to run
the litmus test against their WebCT Vista server (based on BEA
WebLogic webserver and Oracle backend DB) to help us understand why
certain clients have difficulty with this system.

They have only their production environment at this time (a dev
system is planned, hoped-for) so are reluctant to run the litmus
test.  So my questions are these:

1) Is this reluctance justified?  That is, would running the litmus
test on a production server entail a risk of any significance?

2) If the reluctance is not justified, how might we allay their
fears?  Is there anything from w3c (statements, etc.) that could be
used in this endeavor?

Using WebDAV in WebCT Vista is a little different from other systems.
Courseware developers elect to use WebDAV at some point in a course
under development by clicking on a button labeled "WebDAV."  The
WebCT Vista system responds with a long and complex URI that the
courseware developer copies for pasting into their WebDAV-compliant
application or OS interface for WebDAV.

The length of these URIs can be problematic for IE in Win2K and XP.
Sometimes, it will generate a "too long" error message from "My
Network Places" as well. MacOS X doesn't complain about the length
but has other issues I won't go into here.  Here's a typical example
of one of those WebCT Vista WebDAV URIs:

http://131.96.160.58:8000/webct/webdav/131.96.160.58-1044482159055-328326100
1.clocks/University+System+of+Georgia/Georgia+College+and+State+University/E
IS+Testing/Banner+Event+Manager/Banner+Event+Management+01/Section+Content

That's 226 characters.

--
=====================================================================
Dr. Frank Lowney  [email-masked]
     Director, Electronic Instructional Services, a unit of the
     Office of Information and Instructional Technology,
     Professional Pages: http://www.gcsu.edu/oiit/eis/
     Personal Pages: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~flowney
Voice: (478) 445-5260
=====================================================================
We don't make instruction effective, we make effective instruction
more accessible.

Please note that my new e-mail address is: [email-masked]

---

From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:13:50 -0700

Hi Frank,

> test on a production server entail a risk of any significance?

There have been cases where running Litmus exposed an error that caused a
server to crash, and stop running. If Litmus is run against a collection
which does not contain production data, then there should be minimal danger
of data loss (the only risk would be Litmus exposing a bug that corrupted
the database).

So, I'd recommend running the test early some morning, when system use is
minimal.

> fears?  Is there anything from w3c (statements, etc.) that could be

The other approach would be to install WebCT on a test machine, and then run
Litmus against it.

> of one of those WebCT Vista WebDAV URIs:

Litmus is unlikely to uncover a problem such as this, since this is more of
an interoperability problem, than a compliance problem. Litmus tests for
compliance.

Hope this helps.

- Jim