My Blog

Just in Time for Thanksgiving

evanbowling — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:57:06 +0000

Just got Drupal installed on Windows XP with Ingres! Now I need to get the remaining modules installed, but this is a big step. Today I will be looking over the documentation I have been keeping and filling in any holes. I intend to host it on my web space at MSU.

More links to come as I figure out the best place for me to submit to the wiki.

When Quick isn’t Better

evanbowling — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:26:41 +0000

It turns out that using XAMPP was useful for getting a web server up and running with MySQL and PHP running quickly, it also made it harder to make the necessary modifications to enable Drupal to connect to an Ingres database. Here are some of the things that I have doing differently lately under Windows XP to reach our next goal (to have Drupal installed under different OS environments and working with Ingres):

Installing Components Separately

By installing each component separately it is easier to see how all the web serving components fit together. I intend to make a small diagram of all this, because it has been difficult to jump into this project without a working knowledge of how everything works together.

Learning How to Create/Edit Data in Ingres

I have held jobs for nearly four years now that make use of MySQL and Postgres databases, and I was initially intimidated by the amount of programs that come installed with Ingres. I have come to realize that “Ingres Visual DB” is the program that allows me to create tables and execute SQL statements.

Testing My PHP install

While I was finally able to connect to a DB properly, I still haven’t been able to execute any SQL statements in PHP and yield any results. Ingres has the option to be installed with a demonstration database, and so far my queries in “Ingres Visual DB” have gotten results. There must still be some configuration issues with my Ingres DB.

Reflection of UCOSP Codesprint

evanbowling — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:17:13 +0000

It was great to finally meet everyone in person, and I think it helped to get us all on the same page. Since the meeting I have been working on getting Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Drupal running together as a starting point. The group found a single install, XAMPP, which gets Apache, PHP, and MySQL running on Windows, and I am working to find a quick way to get everything running on my Macbook as well. From there, we were going to work on replacing MySQL with Ingres.

Today I found out that when Skype is started, it will take over ports 80 and 443 which kept me from running Apache. Interestingly enough, it seems to work much the same when I start Apache first, but I haven’t made use of any videoconferencing tools for it either.

Intro

evanbowling — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:17:28 +0000

Hello all!

I will be using this blog as a way to record and share my work with the rest of you. Since we are just getting started, this is kind of an extension of my first introduction.

What new skills will I need for this project?

get familiar with unit testing
learn how to use drupal

My strengths?

I have done web programming(PHP, JS, SQL) for nearly 4 years
I worked w/ Openlayers over the summer
I have taken multiple courses dealing w/ Geographic information

Potential weaknesses?

I need to learn the ins/outs of submitting code and patches to a community of developers ( what does it mean for an issue to be crossed out? What are the color codes? )

Contribution to my career?

First formal experience in testing
I would like a career that makes use of open source software
I plan to apply for graduate school in the next couple years, and this will help direct my interests

What about this project interests me?

The amount of working parts and the geographic nature of the project both interest me

I have been looking further into the Drupal documentation right now. More updates later.

Evan