ProjectReport
- 1. 1 | P a g e Project Report Brookhaven National Laboratory Office of Educational Programs Developing the Network Switch Inventory Web Application Isaac Stein: Computer Technology, Tallahassee Community College, Tallahassee, FL 32304 Nicholas Franco: C-ADCES Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton NY 11973 Body Introduction: Previously inventory of the network switches was monitored with Excel spreadsheets that were very difficult and time consuming to keep up to date and accurate. Bill Eisele has successfully created other web applications with PERL in an UNIX environment to help monitor other network systems. Because of their effectiveness it was clear that there should be similar applications to monitor other systems on the web. Nicholas Franco and Bill Eisele decided that the inventory of the network switches would be the next project to work on. Impact on BNL: Network Switches cost thousands of dollars so if any of them goes unaccounted for that could be a loss of a substantial amount of money. The Web application for inventory control of the network switches is a cost effective and efficient way to solve a potentially expensive problem of keeping track of inventory with spreadsheets. With the man hours saved on maintaining the inventory employees can work on other projects. What I did: I first designed webforms according to the specifications given to me by Bill Eisele. I then researched PERL code and wrote the webforms in CGI. I then researched UNIX commands and compiled the CGI forms in UNIX until there were no errors. Bill Eisele then debugged the CGI forms in UNIX until they worked with the database. I gained more understanding of debugging in UNIX by watching Bill Eisele. See Appendix2. DOE Mission: The Web application for inventory control of the network switches is aligned with the Department of Energys mission by providing operational excellence and helps to ensure Americas security and prosperity by addressing technological solutions that help make a more efficient system to manage energy and operational challenges through a web application that can monitor and maintain the Network Switch inventory.
- 2. 2 | P a g e Outcome: The Web application for inventory control of the network switches is finished and working well. After 2 months of research, testing, trial and error we finally ended up a web application that can do the important job of monitoring hundreds of network switches in the Collider Accelerator Department. See Appendix1. Future Work: As with most programs with databases, continued maintenance and updates will be needed. All of the current inventory will need to be entered into the database. And any changes like the state and location will need to be updated whenever they should change. Validation of the input could also be very important. See Appendix3 Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge the entire C-ADCES Group for everyones support. I would like to especially thank Nicholas Franco for leading this project, choosing me to assist and instructing me on the various network systems. Bill Eisele for giving the design specifications, building the MySQL database, debugging and technical instruction. Appendices Appendix1:
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