Indablog

It took a while to figure out that MySQL’s Query Browser doesn’t support doing a select on a temporary table created within the same query. It’s a known problem, having something to do with creating a new connection on the fly (thereby leaving the temp table session), but I don’t have the link right now.

In any case, this bug cost me a good chunk of time. Testing was becoming a nightmare, till I realized it wasn’t me being stupid, but my tool. I found another MySQL browser named Navicat which performs as expected (30 day free trial. $99 for a standard version, more with a report writer). MySQL’s Query Browser has a superior schemata browser to Navicat, and I prefer the way it inserts delimiters for my script (even if you have to be extra careful about dropping procedures when recompiling fails), but the inability to deal with temp tables means it’s fundamentally broken for my purposes. Other things have been going wacky too, after working fine for days. I suspected MySQL, but it’s better for the world if the problem is a flaky tool (or a flaky application developer, of course).

Navicat also has backup tools, a reasonably functional foreign key creation tool, and a very basic data transfer tool (which looks primitive to me, having nearly lived inside DTS for over tw years). They tout it as a substitute for phpAdmin, but I haven’t tried that yet.

The main thrust right now is the procedure that allocates and redistributes the votes. After that, I can work on the display of the results, and wrap up the posting of raw ballots. That will constitute the main engine of Indaba.org. My goal was to be done with a testable version in time for the academy awards (to support a fun use for few friends), but I’m falling behind, so the firsts tests will probably involve Presidential horse races.

After that I’ll have to deal with key features like: 1) voter authentication (not trivial at all); 2) values voting; 3) user-driven creation of elections, selections and nominations, and; 4) visual representation of voter coalitions.

Filed under: Development Chronicles