Re: [Skunkworks] KCPE 2010 Results Nightmare - Why? Simple 'ABC' of systems
@ Shadrack, I agree 100% The systems analysts and developers that come up with the KCPE/KCSE websites and SMS systems simply do not do enough in terms of analysis and design. They come up with a system, test it with a few requests and demo it to KNEC who are very excited at this 'New' technology and adopt it immediately; lack of knowledge or good enough techies on their side. They could be using a very high-end server and assume that it shall handle requests adequately. They could even have put some kind of load-balancing software on the systems but is this enough? We simply need to do better in terms of high availability services. Services like Google and Facebook have hundreds of millions of users yet they rarely ever break down. What Kenyans trying to access the systems are doing albeit unknowingly, is simple Denial of Service (DoS) where servers are flooded with so many requests at a go such that they simply break down. On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Calvin Omari <calvinebarongo@gmail.com>wrote:
Systems development does not encampass coding though it is an integral part of system/software development there is a reason why simulation and modelling is tought to software developers i strongly concur with Mwaniki as this thing have already been done and it will not be new to borrow or to do software reuse Regards and Happy technical year 2011
On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 5:43 PM, <sospeter@elimu.co.ke> wrote:
I get your theory, but wouldn't the solution mean that you'll have to display a tweeter like message when the server is overloaded(the birds carrying a whale)?
In such a case the user may not come back ever right? Like I gave up on tweeter when that happened twice.
Regards.
Hi Skunks, Have been following the thread on the frustrations faced by KCPE candidates and parents when trying to access the results online and via SMS. This is not unique to KNEC, it happens all the time to ATM bridge systems, Online transactions processing, SMS Based systems especially of late the MPESA.
So what is the problem?
Very simple, designers and developers of these systems do not understand, are not aware or choose to ignore the Queue Theory principles!!
I will use a very simple example to illustrate the point. Imaging a queue in the bank waiting to be served by one cashier. If the policy of the bank is that a customer must be served within 10 mins, then the logical thing to do is to know when to turn away a customer who if they join the queue, will not be served within 10 mins. This is better than have all thousands of customers not served within 10 mins as per policy.......and will not kill the cashier!!
In short, it is time developers started taking queuing theory seriously when developing these kinds of systems.
Shad
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-- Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
Calvin Omari Systems Developer/Designer http://www.facebook.com/barongo
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Scalability is something that you do up front if you are prudent. Amazing all these years later the short-code operators repeat the very same mistakes expecting different results. This is the definition of insanity On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 1:19 PM, m mugo <mugo2of3@gmail.com> wrote:
@ Shadrack, I agree 100%
The systems analysts and developers that come up with the KCPE/KCSE websites and SMS systems simply do not do enough in terms of analysis and design. They come up with a system, test it with a few requests and demo it to KNEC who are very excited at this 'New' technology and adopt it immediately; lack of knowledge or good enough techies on their side.
They could be using a very high-end server and assume that it shall handle requests adequately. They could even have put some kind of load-balancing software on the systems but is this enough?
We simply need to do better in terms of high availability services. Services like Google and Facebook have hundreds of millions of users yet they rarely ever break down.
What Kenyans trying to access the systems are doing albeit unknowingly, is simple Denial of Service (DoS) where servers are flooded with so many requests at a go such that they simply break down.
On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Calvin Omari <calvinebarongo@gmail.com>wrote:
Systems development does not encampass coding though it is an integral part of system/software development there is a reason why simulation and modelling is tought to software developers i strongly concur with Mwaniki as this thing have already been done and it will not be new to borrow or to do software reuse Regards and Happy technical year 2011
On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 5:43 PM, <sospeter@elimu.co.ke> wrote:
I get your theory, but wouldn't the solution mean that you'll have to display a tweeter like message when the server is overloaded(the birds carrying a whale)?
In such a case the user may not come back ever right? Like I gave up on tweeter when that happened twice.
Regards.
Hi Skunks, Have been following the thread on the frustrations faced by KCPE candidates and parents when trying to access the results online and via SMS. This is not unique to KNEC, it happens all the time to ATM bridge systems, Online transactions processing, SMS Based systems especially of late the MPESA.
So what is the problem?
Very simple, designers and developers of these systems do not understand, are not aware or choose to ignore the Queue Theory principles!!
I will use a very simple example to illustrate the point. Imaging a queue in the bank waiting to be served by one cashier. If the policy of the bank is that a customer must be served within 10 mins, then the logical thing to do is to know when to turn away a customer who if they join the queue, will not be served within 10 mins. This is better than have all thousands of customers not served within 10 mins as per policy.......and will not kill the cashier!!
In short, it is time developers started taking queuing theory seriously when developing these kinds of systems.
Shad
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-- Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
Calvin Omari Systems Developer/Designer http://www.facebook.com/barongo
_______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke
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Talking of load balancing, is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(networking) what some firms have been using to counter Anonymous DDOS?
participants (3)
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Dennis Kioko -
m mugo -
Rad!