For the last couple of weeks in some of my spare time I’ve being writing unit and functional tests for Rails-CMDB. So far it’s helped me spot more than a few issues, the most surprising to me was the naming of my os controller, which the functional test tried to test as O. So currently I’m in the process of refactoring things to mesh better with the Rails idiom.

The main upshot of all of this; it’s likely to be early October before the next release of Rails-CMDB, and the version number is very likely to jump a few points due to unreleased versions.

Following a comment (that was from when the blog had comments) from mathie (Graeme Mathieson) on my last post on Rails-CMDB about the the Rails way for naming of columns within Models. I’m planning on doing the following column rename for the next release of Rails-CMDB:

rename_column :assets, :delivery_date, :delivered_on
rename_column :assets, :removal_date, :removed_on

rename_column :locations, :start_date, :started_on
rename_column :locations, :end_date, :ended_on

rename_column :purchase_orders, :order_date, :ordered_on

rename_column :vendors, :last_order_date, :stopped_ordering_on

So the question for the Rails coders out there - does this seem correct ? There’s also a single table who’s primary field is not called name, so I guess to do it in the Rails way it should be changed as well.

Well it’s been a month since the first release of Rails-CMDB and it’s now time for another release. This is the rather large list of changes:

• Added some unit tests for PurchaseOrder.
• Added Export to CSV.
• Added Import from CSV.
• An asset can have many hardware items.
• The Asset name does not need to be a number.
• Catch trying to show a device that does not exist.
• Add order_date column to PurchaseOrder Model.
• Rename order_date column in Asset to delivery_date.
• Correct typo’s in CreateNetworks which prevented loading of the schema.
• Rename the database’s used to match the application name.
• Added some simple doc’s on getting the system up and running.
• Change to using host: 127.0.0.1 in database.yml instead of sockets.

Not sure what is going to be in the next version, however I expect it’ll not be ready for release until mid to late September.

Untitled by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

We managed to escape the city over the bank holiday weekend. It was wonderful having no computers, internet or related reading.

There was also us wandering round Sheffield with my mother and visiting the city center for the first time in about 12 years. The effects of the flood a couple of months ago are still very much visible in many parts of the city.

In emergency pull ring by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

I’ve been very quiet so far this month, been busy with work, relaxing and a little reading. So here’s another photo from my last trip out.

This evening I have the flat to myself and a plan to work a little on CSV imports to Rails-CMDB. In the next couple of days (or the end of the weekend) there could very well be another release.

This is the first ever release (0.1) of Rails-CMDB, the Ruby on Rails project I’ve been working on since the end of last month. It’s best described as little rough round the edges and the under laying DB schema may change with no upgrade path. However it’s possible to enter (and change) all of information via the interface and also view all details for a device on a single page.

Untitled by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

This afternoon I happened across a folk dance festival outside the Scottish Parliament on the way home. Spotting a chance to take different photos (i.e. not of swans or ducks) near home I rushed off to get the camera.

Turned out it was a good choice. I managed to get quite a few good pictures like this one, which captures the movement really well.

Well that sounds a lot better than it really is, as there are only 5 working days left this month. However I do really need a rest from work and some time with the growing pile of books in the in-progress pile.

There is no solid plans for this time away from the office, just a tentative plan for the first release of my Rails Configuration Management Database (name still to be decided) by Thursday this week. I’ve now been working on it for about a month and it just needs a review, some minor cleanup’s and then more importantly; I need to decide on which open source license it will have before I can do a the first release.

Wall by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

Today I finally made it out of the flat with my camera (for the first time this month) and the Lens Baby 3G. It’s taking some getting used too; however I did a few photos that were in focus and one that works even tho it’s not in focus.

I think this lens has some great potential it’s just going to time to getting used to manual focus and moving the sweet spot around. However I’m sure it’ll be fun and will involve some odd looks as well.

Work has been really busy for the last couple of weeks, so I’ve not had much time to get out and take photos or get the Rails application I’m writing into a state where it can be published.

There’s now light at the end of the tunnel, so next week I should hopefully have time to get out and take more photo’s and starting posting stuff again.

Yesterday I had a day trip to London and picked up a Nokia N800 Internet tablet. So far I’ve got it upgraded to the 2007 OS version. It’s flashy; however I need to find a real use for it 😉

What you looking at! by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

The weather in Edinburgh is still bad enough to have stopped me getting out and taking more pictures, when I’ve had the chance. So here’s one from the May this year.

The experimental Ruby on Rails application is plodding along nicely, so far I have about six database tables with relationships between a number of them, and I’m getting it to display meaningful data from them.

I’m slowly starting to get my head round how to set up table relationships. Over the weekend I expect to have the first pass at a workable data model that records most of the required database. This is going slowly as I’m only getting to spend about an hour a day on this project.