Tracpoint

Tracpoint is a system developed by Terramar Networks for the tracking of Land, Sea and Air Assets. These Assets range from Cars to Helicopter. When I arrived in Terramar Networks there had been difficulties with getting another in-house developer to take up the project as there was no documentation and site was stretched to a breaking point with quick fixes and additional features where making it worse. The previous in-house developer had left a year previous and I was informed if I liked a challenge this was the role for me, which I did. There was additional outside contractors that created new functionality for the site. As there was an understandable apprehension about touching the core functionality of the site as previous developers had done this and caused more problems than they fixed, but I knew that only way to iron out the problems was to work on the core.

 

So I started the procedure of making the code more stable by using svn on the web server so that there was a consistency in the code between developers. What is ideal about svn in this situation is that it allows for stricter control of source code through creation of release tags and branches for each developer. The previous method was to use ftp and this caused conflicts because the same file was different between the developers and the web server without svn in place.

 

I began my development by concentration on the main section of the site which was the Google maps api v2. The assets where all tracked on Google maps using the api v2. As there was problems already on the existing maps that could not be resolved either because of bugs in the core or with problems with the features of the existing api I decided to upgrade to the newer api v3. This process allowed me to understand how the original developers had worked with the core and it also allowed me to understand all the features of the Google maps api v3 and v2. As I upgraded the Google maps api v3 I was able to find the problems that had been created in the core and ironed them out as I went along with the upgrade. Google maps api also added new functionality to the maps which included being able to add more markers to the maps as previous api had a limit of around 200 markers. Svn here allowed me to create a branch for the Google maps api v3 and test the core fixes separately on Google maps api v2 release version.

 

I also worked along with a junior developer on a placement from University of Ulster named Aaron Bond to improve the appearance of the site and to improve methods of tracking data about who was using the site and what browser and OS they were using.