ITS Standards

DC Kelley · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:37 am Post subject: Proposed new features list

The attached file below list the known features requests which different users have proposed for the tool. This list is posted for group review and discussion, and exact process of selecting what items will be done (and when) is still under review but will relate to what FHWA support for the process can be applied.

It appears at this time that the original process of support by way of the SAE cooperative agreement is no longer working and resolving this to everyones different needs is now being discussed. FHWA is engaged in the process and has suggested some ways to move ahead. They wish to see a focus on SDO use rather then end user use of the tool (in order to complete the standards as quickly as can be done).

As a result of this interruption only tool features directly needed to support the document publishing needs of SAE and IEEE (for which SCSC is a contractor) are being developed at this time (Nov 2004). The current download release will be maintained and available in any event (which you can obtain at the top of this fourm). We are hopeful that this delay will be short.

Please review the attached list and comment as you see fit. Not all of these items seem to be with the effort to implement to me. If you are reviewing this from an SDO point of view, you will shortly receive a copy to mark up with your "choices" regarding which items you would rank high or low in priority.

DC Kelley · Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:11 am Post subject: Additona features

The following have occurred to me over the weekend [and days that followed], so I append them here. These would all be part of the category group four Basic utility needs, used to make the tool more functional, or user friendly, or open to expansion, and less prone to problems in use.

A working FIND button
The find function was disabled some time ago and needs to be restored. The original problem was disagreement (perhaps uncertainty is a better choice of word) on how to properly display the sub-set of find results coupled by a feeling that a steward did not need a find button for his own work. Today people need to be able to find among 1000+ entries. The result should be shown in a temp table (read only) and merged with the new table layout at the least.

A cross SDO file FIND button
This would extends the find function over multiple SDO functional areas (different databases today) to locate relevant entries. Today this is entirely a manual process and the table copy utility must be used to bring the results to a single place. What is wanted is to extend the culling process to build results into a temp table for comparison use.

Context dependent help
Each major dialog screen in the tool should have some kind of help button that would bring up a context dependent help screen to explain how that dialog is to be used and what each button is for.

Additional Meta Rule Checking
There are over a dozen additional business rules for well formed message that need to be added to the code in order to detect and recommend how to correct poorly formed messages. Today the rules for detecting correct data elements are robust, but those for messages are still very weak.

Support for the .NET framework
This is more an internal development issue, but there is a strong need to cross over from the current development environment of VB and C++ to the new .NET environment (which has a side effect has much stronger direct support for XML and 3rd party tools). This will require a re-working of about 30% of the code base to as the database model has changed quite a bit in the NET environment.

I will collect these and send a "survey" to the SDOs to gather a ranking of the above items. DCK

Site Admin · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Status as of Feb 2006

Here is a status report given to IEEE (the contracting SDO) and then passed on to the FHWA (the funding agent for the improvements).

DC Kelley · Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 9:05 am Post subject:

I just wanted to update this thread to mention that all of these are now done and the current release (440 and beyond) has them all.

Yes, we need some other things added, as always seems to be the case, but at this time no, there is currently no plan to fund or do it. I was recently informed by IEEE (the host for this work) that FHWA says we need to speak with each SDO directly for any further work, and to me this is costly and not in the spirit of keeping the work inter-change able. None the less, each SDO does have some needs they want so I will try to work that out. Sub-setting a schema set is (to me) the only universal great need at this time.