[Aust-NZ] Fw: Jeroen - [Fwd: Re: GeoNetwork and ANZLIC Profile work]

Sat Jul 19 04:14:37 PDT 2008

Jeroen,
Your suggestions below sound likely to be right on track.

What us techies need to do is convert this to a business case for 
sponsors. Ie, convert everything to $$$.

Effort required to refactor= ?
What will we gain by the refactoring?
* Faster testing? (Effort reduced by ...)
* Faster ramp up time for developers? From x weeks to y weeks.
* Faster software development. (by x%)
...

I realise that some of these estimates will be difficult and might not 
be accurate. But providing numbers will make it much easier to get 
sponsorship.

Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au wrote:
>
> IMO:
>
>
> This is from a private email thread that Jeroen has kindly agreed to 
> making public.
>
> Thanks again for your help on this Jeroen. There are some good ideas 
> here.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> ----- Forwarded by Bruce Bannerman/DPI/VICGOV1 on 16/07/2008 10:45 AM 
> -----
>
>
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > From: Jeroen Ticheler <>
> > To: Bruce Bannerman <>
> > Subject: Re: GeoNetwork and ANZLIC Profile work
> > Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:49:01 +0200
> >
> > Hi Bruce,
> > This is way overdue :-( I'm in my last days of working for the FAO-UN  
> > and trying to get two GeoNetwork implementations operational before  
> > leaving and moving from Italy to The Netherlands. In short, problem  
> > life is pretty hectic these weeks :-)
> >
> > Some comments inline:
> >
> > On May 22, 2008, at 12:34 PM, Bruce Bannerman wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Jeroen,
> > >
> > > Thanks for initiating the proposal to get support of sandbox
> > > environments in GeoNetwork. I certainly appreciate your efforts to  
> > > help.
> > Very welcome!
> > >
> > > I thought that I'd contact you privately to see if you have any other
> > > thoughts on how we could better work with the GeoNetwork community,  
> > > but
> > > at the same time coordinate and try to prioritise ANZLIC
> > > requirements.
> > >
> > > Please note, I'm not trying to set something up that undermines the  
> > > role
> > > of your PSC, but hopefully will work as an ANZLIC Profile coordinating
> > > and QA body. We have too much duplicated and wasted effort at the
> > > moment. The pace of development is also too slow.
> > >
> > > Hopefully in time we will get more GeoNetwork developers and the
> > > community will become more comfortable with their abilities.
> >
> > We last week had a meeting in Bolsena (OSGeo hacking event Bolsena)  
> > where we were with some 10 GeoNetwork developers. We did a great deal  
> > of proposal writing on issues that require discussion and decisions.  
> > I'l send an email to the developer list on these issues soon so others  
> > can react.
> >
> > Cameron made some good suggestions in the document he put forward.  
> > Some of the requirements I see that need to be solved to get a more  
> > solid and quick development are:
> >
> > - Set up project sponsoring for GeoNetwork that can help to fund  
> > specific activities that help the project in the long run. Here are  
> > some ideas of what such a person could do (or tasks that currently  
> > lack the required attention)
> > - The project needs a developer that explicitly acts as the system  
> > administrator & release manager. This is something I now do in  
> > practice but that receives only a 2% attention of my time. The person  
> > would be responsible for reviewing code on compliance with coding  
> > standards adopted by the project, proper use of the issue tracker,  
> > running tests, monitoring the continuous integration process (not in  
> > place yet, but coming), test integration with GeoServer, make beta and  
> > final releases and publishing/announcing the releases on the necessary  
> > sites. He/she would also do the administration of sandboxes,  
> > developers etc.
> > - Have a person explicitly involved in the maintenance of the  
> > documentation for both users and developers, both on the website and  
> > in DocBook (the real manuals).
> >
> > There's also a need to get existing code documented better and in a  
> > number of cases add test processes to that existing code. Then we have  
> > discussed migrating code to new frameworks. That kind of work requires  
> > mostly rewriting and re-factoring of existing functionality. Obviously  
> > that is something that most of us don't find very attractive to fund  
> > since it doesn't provide short term benefits in new functionality.  
> > However, it does allow us to make the code more accessible, flexible  
> > and manageable. For instance, at the time the project started there  
> > were no frameworks ready to use that suited our needs. So the Jeeves  
> > API was developed as part of the project. By now, it makes sense to  
> > start replacing Jeeves functions with other frameworks like Spring  
> > MVC, Hybernate and others.
> >
> > An annual workshop has been held every year, and such an event is the  
> > place to discuss f2f the strategy for the coming years. Simon Pigot  
> > and Kate Roberts attended that last year. For this year I am still not  
> > sure how to organize it. I have to get some organization behind the  
> > project to sponsor the event. Maybe FAO will do this, maybe there are  
> > others.
> >
> > On getting your priorities well covered in the project, I think that  
> > there are no big issues. The project needs to take some steps to allow  
> > for (a) plugable application profiles (b) plugable translation  
> > packages (not to much of an issue for you :-) ) and (c) plugable skins/
> > themes. All of these have been discussed and are in the process of  
> > taking shape in a proposal. Some of the work is funded, some is  
> > underfunded and some is not funded at all.
> >
> >
> > Greetings from Rome,
> > Jeroen
> > >
>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
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