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This document covers areas for investigation and research during the course of the project. Its a discovery process and thinking out aloud. Comments that help develop this list are welcome.
Web site
- Are the forums seeing posts on a daily basis?
- In Q&A are there questions and corresponding answers?
- Are moderators active?
- Does the site show an explanation of the project in terms of:
- Aims
- Objectives
- Ownership of and access to results
- Funding sources
- Beneficiaries - Commercial and/or charitable
- Timescales
- Benefits to science
- Benefits to the human race
News
- Does the site show project news and an RSS feed articles at least each week and preferably 2/3 times per week.?
- Is there science news being published?
Availability
Are the hosts/servers involved available when needed?
- How available is the system and its hosts. This will include Scheduler and Web Server as a minimum.
Work production
Does the project produce a steady flow of work?
- In a 24 hour period how many work units were produced vs how many were distributed vs how many were requested by users
- Same as above but in 48 hour and 72 hour periods.
Result Handling
Does the project transition results on a timely basis
- What is the min, ave and max time for these activities on a 24, 48 and 72 hour snapshots
Does the project validate on a timely basis
- What is the min, ave and max time for these activities on a 24, 48 and 72 hour snapshots
Does the project assimilate on a timely basis
- What is the min, ave and max time for these activities on a 24, 48 and 72 hour snapshots
Does the project delete results on a timely basis.
This makes disc space available and reduces the risk of capacity problems and/or poor database performance.
- What is the min, ave and max time for these activities on a 24, 48 and 72 hour snapshots?
- Look for old results that should have been deleted.. Remove outliers to
avoid distortion.
Is the database consistent?
- Referential integrity check
Are there signs of wayward results?
- Strange results with high or low or irregular credit?
System Management
Read the scheduler log and check for CRITICAL events. Simulate events like no MySQL to find out what will be recorded here. Assess importance and develop a means of analysing these to see how these message can give indicators of reliability or otherwise.
Evidence of backups of the database.
- Is there evidence of backup copies being made?
- Are they made on a a regular basis?
Is project data being exported?
- XML data available?
- Exported on a daily basis?
- Are stats in a regular place?
Is Server status available?
- server_status.php - is it there in the right place?
Are the housekeeping tasks being run
- E.G. uotd, Q&A / forum activity update etc run regularly - i.e are they scheduled.
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