dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 18 August 2011 14:40, Olav Poppe <olav.poppe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Thanks
> It seems the barrier for going offline should be quite high... Will have to
> look more into exactly how bad the connections are in the worse areas, and
> also into the offline data entry in 2.4.
> As for those districts that are in fact offline, is the live package with H2
> sufficient? Keeping postgres out of the picture would likely reduce the
> amount of support required quite a lot.

Simple answer is no one has tried it yet in such a production setting.
 And as Ola points out, you really want to avoid offline as much as
possible as it creates an exponential maintenance headache - both in
terms of keeping hardware and software running, but also keeping
metadata in synch.

Where you must be offline because you are indeed seriously offline
then the less software you have to maintain the better.

BUT, metadata maintenance will still be a human/policy/HR problem
regardless of the underlying db stack and is likely to be your biggest
headache.  The most draconian approach would be to to provide
districts with metadata (or even a metadata populated starter db file)
and require that they don't alter anything other than add data.  We
don't currently have a way to enforce this metadata ownership concern
through the software and in fact it becomes less of a concern as
things become more centralized.

Slightly less draconian being that they can add metadata but not alter
or remove state provided metadata.  When this happens, then the
exports to state level will be troubled as many districts will be
expected to be using the same dataelements, categories, datasets etc.

I wonder about the merits of a stripping out the metadata maintenance
modules in a such a lite-lite install?  Not sure how crippling this
would be.  Metadata import being the only way to update metadata.
Maybe that's too draconian but it could work for ultra-offline data
entry.

Bob

> Olav
>
> Den 18. aug. 2011 kl. 13:32 skrev Jason Pickering:
>
> I agree with both Bob and Ola.
> We have tried not quite yet succeeded in getting DHIS2 installed with
> Tomcat/Postgres on Windows with a one-click installer, this my caveat about
> a "supervised" install. There are a lot of things which can happen on users
> machines and maintenance becomes a huge issue. DHIS is still under intense
> development, and a lot of things change quickly. Upgrading a single server
> is a piece of cake. Upgrading dozens or hundreds of off-line machines is a
> true nightmare and a serious risk and resource drain to any deployment.
> I agree with Ola. Totally exclude an on-line server as an option first. If
> you have already done that, all I can say is, be prepared for a LOT of tech
> support.
> Regards,
> Jason
>
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 3:15 PM, Ola Hodne Titlestad <olati@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>>
>> Olav,
>> How offline are these districts? Can they not get connected through mobile
>> usb modems/dongles? There is so much to gain from online deployment that I
>> would check out every alternative of connectivity before deciding to go
>> completely offline. The mobile Internet solution is working very well in
>> Kenya. With the offline data entry capabilities in the upcoming 2.4, the
>> districts do not have to be online during the data entry process, which is a
>> major advantage in areas with poor/unstable connectivity.
>>
>> Further recommendations on deployment can be found in the implementation
>> guide here:
>> http://dhis2.org/doc/snapshot/en/implementer/html/ch04.html
>> And a presentation on the same topic in the zip file with implementation
>> guide slides here:
>> http://dhis2.org/download/presentations/presentations.zip
>> Ola
>> -------
>>
>> ----------------------------------
>> Ola Hodne Titlestad (Mr)
>> HISP
>> Department of Informatics
>> University of Oslo
>>
>> Mobile: +47 48069736
>> Home address: Vetlandsvn. 95B, 0685 Oslo, Norway. Googlemaps link
>>
>>
>> On 18 August 2011 15:02, Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> One strong reason not to use it is the relative lack of testing. In
>>> theory, it should work, but just as with MySQL, much more testing has
>>> occurred with Postgres than with the other database systems.
>>> We have some beta-level Windows installers, which might be of interest to
>>> you, which work pretty well under supervised circumstances. It might be
>>> something to consider if you want a relatively automated install of the
>>> DHISLive/Postgresql stack, with automated restore of the database.
>>> Regards,
>>> Jason
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Olav Poppe <olav.poppe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>> we're looking at what do to with offline installations for the
>>>> implementation here in Ghana. Are there any reasons not to use DHIS Live?
>>>> Can H2 be used (importing the metadata into an empty database), or should
>>>> postgres be set up as well?
>>>> There are 170 districts here, and about half of them might have to be
>>>> offline installs so an easy-to-use solutions would be good.
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Olav
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>
>
>
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