Dr. William (Bill) Olivier, 2000 - present
Corporate Training
Random Access Multimedia, White Rock, British Columbia
www.RAMultimedia.on.ca
Paper-Based Exam Creation Application, 2000
Technologies Used:
Microsoft Access 2000
Bill is a retired professor from OISIE. During his time there he was heavily involved in designing exams. He had started an application in Access 2000 to allow the creation of multiple-choice exams. When I had met him he had made significant progress but because of his other activities he was having trouble finishing it. I was hired to complete the application for him:
NatRevRegistration.com, 2001 - ongoing
For TD Canada Trust Bank
www.NatRevRegistration.com
While I was working on the exam application, I learned about Bill's business. One of the things he did was design exams for TD's people to test their knowledge of mutual funds.
Each year each TD employee that is to sell mutual funds must take an exam and pass it. Bill worked with TD's training people to design the exams. When they were completed, he would take care of the marking. One of the things I heard about through him was the registration process for this exam - it was all paper-based. I suggested to him that the registration process could be done through a website. He gave the goahead to set up something as a test. I did. He talked to TD about it and showed them what could be done. He got a contract to set set up the registration site. The site handles the registration for 10,000 people across Canada.
The first version of the site was setup using Microsoft technologies:
Server-side:
Active Server Pages
SQL Server 2000
Stored Procedures
TSQL
ActiveX Data Objects
OLE DB Provider for SQL Server
Registration Client Side:
Initially designed to work only in Internet Explorer and Netscape 4.61
Added ability to be used in other browsers such as FireFox when the need arose
Javascript
DHTML
Administration/Content Management Client Side:
Initially designed to work only in Internet Explorer
Initially used only VBScript
Initially used ActiveX Controls
Added ability to be used in other browsers such as FireFox when the need arose
Switched from using VBScript to JavaScript to handle non-Internet Explorer browsers which necessitated replacing ActiveX Controls with regular HTML controls which could be done since the same functionality could be acheived with the newer browsers.
The site was hosted on RAM's own servers: one for IIS and one for the SQL Server 2000 database which were located at Q9, Downtown Toronto. I set up the servers and configured them.
The administration side of the site allowed a non-techie to do basic administration of the site:
This worked so well that instead of doing 2 exam sessions each year they changed to holding exams every month.
Windows scripts ran daily that did various checks and backups:
In late 2005:
Because of the expense of running servers at Q9, Bill decided it was time to use a less costly alternative. Beanfield Technologies was chosen because its rates were lower and because of our experience with the servers he realized not all of Q9's services were needed. At the same time, he opted to switch to Linux servers. After some testing he settled on Fedora Core 4 as the Linux distribution to use.
I handled the conversion of the natrev site to php/mysql. I set up Fedora Core 4 on one of my development systems to do the conversion and to learn more about the ins and outs of Linux. I tested the transferring of data from SQL Server to MySql and set up ways to check that the data was okay afterwards.
I learned about Linux administration and using such tools as Webmin and phpMyAdmin for the Linux world. I set up the cron jobs using bash scripting to replicate the windows scripts:
The switch to the Linux servers was done at Christmas 2005 since most of TD's people would be busy with the holidays and if there was a problem we had a few days to fix them. The switchover went smoothly.
A problem I did find with Fedora Core 4 (FC4) was with an external harddrive we had installed to receive backups. It turned out that if the server rebooted, the name of the external harddrive changed each time. So it became necessary to encrypt the backup and email a copy to each of us to ensure there was a backup offsite as well as backups on the machine itself.
In spring, 2006, Bill had me set up 2 more servers running Fedora Core 5 to duplicate the FC4 server. The natrev site was set up on both so that if the FC4 server went down, it was a simple matter of importing the latest backup to one of the FC5 backups, switch network connection and be back up and running in less than 30 minutes.
I still monitor the natrev site using the emails and adjust the programming from time to time. Occasionally, I would go in and test the backup FC5 servers.
www.RamKat.com (now closed) 2001
For creation of multiple-choice exams on-line and taking them through the website.
Technologies Used:
Server Side:
Active Server Pages
VBScript
ActiveX Data Objects
SQL
OLE DB Provider for Jet
Access 2000 Database
Test Taker Client Side:
HTML
DHTML
Javascript
Test Creation/Content Management Client Side:
HTML
DHTML
VBScript
When I had completed the Exam Creation Application for Bill and I had set up TD's registration site, I realized that I had a good understanding of what was involved in designing and organizing an exam. With the Net gaining popularity, I thought it made sense to design a website that allowed people to take a multiple-choice exam through it. I did some preliminary stuff - showed it to Bill and he gave the goahead to continue and we would host it on his server and offer it to TD Canada Trust.
The site demonstrated the feasibility of doing a secure nation-wide on-line exam. Non-technical people could create the on-line multiple-choice tests from their PC browser. Their peers, employees, students, etc. would logon to do an exam of their knowledge of the course being taught or the facts being assessed. The test score was available as soon as the exam was completed and could be ranked with others who had taken the same test.
The test questions could be randomly generated from a bank of set questions. The questions themselves could be created to contain a mixture of media: text, graphics, video, sound and animation.
www.RAMultimedia.on.ca, 2006
Converted existing ASP/SQL Server based website to a php/MySQL structure.