EduGlu Sandbox

One of my present responsibilities is to sort out a statistics website which offers enquirers synthesized statistical data produced by re-analyzing data from a variety of sources. The website is developed by a commercial web development company. For months they have struggled to produce a dynamic query system where users key in the analysis they want and tables are then created dynamically for them from that the data. This hasn’t been working properly. Frequently columns, or rows, of data will be arbitrarily transposed. It is easy to see when this has happened when it is, for example, the row headings that suddenly appear in the middle of a table. It isn’t easy to see when rows or columns of figures are transposed. We – who own the website-, only know when this happens to a user when the user notices it and tells us we are giving them incorrect data. The system hasn’t been able to produce charts, and the template it uses for tables produces at times unwieldy tables that cannot be seen as a whole on one screen. 

My solution, since the web development company couldn’t guarantee one: they aren’t sure what is causing the problem, is to abandon the system that dynamically creates tables from databases, and instead to have a library of accurate tables and charts that we have created and a system which calls these up when a user submits an enquiry. We discussed this with the consultant from the web company. He shook his head sadly because, he said, we were taking a backward step by abandoning the dynamic system.   Since the aim of the website is the production of accurate and tables and charts that enquirers can download and use as they like, the biggest backward step would be to accept a solution that can not guarantee that the accuracy of any data we deliver.

  Yesterday I went to the exhibition of Italian Divisionist paintings at the National Gallery. In front of a large work of complex writhing colours my audio guide advised: ‘take a few steps back from the painting if you can, you will be able to see better how the composition works.’ Taking a few steps backwards and looking again is always good advice.