Ya, I fully support someone fully rebuilding the registration system, or at least extending it to support waiting lists and stuff. I also think it should be staggered to allow certain amounts of people on at certain time frames (i.e. everyone gets a random number and each person with a certain number has a frame of 4 hours to register courses).

The current servers McMaster has are probably good enough in terms of power; it's just the way they're using it which is full retard. They need to get some real IT people in there to properly set it up. One of my friends is currently working in the chem eng department on their website, and he says the thing is basically held together by bandaids :p

I think we should lobby McMaster to get some people in there who actually have some sort of qualifications in managing servers and web software in there, rather than buying new servers.

It would probably save them a lot of money in bandwidth costs wasted on people unsuccessfully making it into mugsi in the end :p

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Ya, I fully support someone fully rebuilding the registration system, or at least extending it to support waiting lists and stuff. I also think it should be staggered to allow certain amounts of people on at certain time frames (i.e. everyone gets a random number and each person with a certain number has a frame of 4 hours to register courses).

The current servers McMaster has are probably good enough in terms of power; it's just the way they're using it which is full retard. They need to get some real IT people in there to properly set it up. One of my friends is currently working in the chem eng department on their website, and he says the thing is basically held together by bandaids :p

I think we should lobby McMaster to get some people in there who actually have some sort of qualifications in managing servers and web software in there, rather than buying new servers.

It would probably save them a lot of money in bandwidth costs wasted on people unsuccessfully making it into mugsi in the end :p

I agree completely. I might be wrong here but the University is rather adrift of where the student opinion stands on matters, MSU "comparatively" does a much better job then that lot in Gilmour Hall!
Why we needed that MacAccess portal is completely beyond me! If I want to access Mugsi or Email or Library I will go to the separate pages for them, why would I want to do them under one roof or If I put it correctly why would I pay McMaster to hire IT people to program that portal lol! Its just silly; Like having Facebook and Twitter and Hotmail via the same page, how much of a difference does that make!

SOLAR is clearly what the main issue is here!

Originally Posted by patelp

Great Work!

They have changed webCt to elm... so why not make changes to SOLAR while they're at it.

While I definitely agree that SOLAR is in major need of an overhaul (waitlists would DEFINITELY be a huge asset), my friends and I never found WebCT to be all that bad. As for the new ELM arrangement, only time will tell how good/bad it really is.

http://www.macinsiders.com/showthrea...6 2#post76162

Please post your "registration horror stories" on that thread. I'm collecting them for Chris Martin, and he's planning on writing an open letter to the registrar. The background is there too for you to read.

Hey everyone!

So just an update to my earlier post, so I have indirectly established that getting a new server at this time and point; In the current financial circumstances would be rather implausible! I fully appreciate Chris Martin's effort to go to the Registrars office and talk to them and to create an initiative to gather "Solar Horror Stories" as a way to convince the Admin that there is major student inconvenience every time we choose our courses.

However here is the catch, I recently got to know from the BOD's office itself that McMaster Administration is facing a 30-60 Million Dollar Deficit for next year that it needs to cover up by gathering more donations or cutting more costs. I believe that is the reason we have had sessionals being laid off and other costs being cut at other services, you can argue against it but I personally think it would not be possible for this BOD to "get" a new Registration System for us, as Rohan said it is only used a few times a year and therefore 20-30 Million looks rather implausible under current circumstances!



Here's my solution, I mentioned before that I was planning on writing and updating a decade long policy to reflect the current climate. As you can see above a policy basically has a set of recommendations that the future leaders of MSU will use to lobby with. Given the circumstances I feel that it would be much more easier to lobby for a software upgrade to the current system that includes more helpful features. As the student enrollment increases at record numbers exponentially each year, this problem will get worse; but atleast the experience itself can be streamlined!



Here is a list of the ones I currently have gathered/though off:


1) Course Wait lists: A number of Universities have wait list systems for courses where one can just join the wait list and upon getting a spot receive an email with a time limit for him/her to claim that seat. That would be much better then logging in at random times in hope that it has space


2) Seat Lists: Right now in order to see if a course is full/open we have to choose it via the menu, it would be much more easier if people know in parallel how many regular spaces a class has and how many are open at the moment before they choose it. This is actually an extension of the waitlist system! But on the other hand this could be put up on a seperate page and server, what this will do is that it will save bandwidth. This page wouldn't require a login or security or any other load inducing complications. Hence in other words it wouldn't be full/crash all that often!



3) Entry Queue: Right now getting into SOLAR is a bizzare concotion of luck and mashing the Refresh Button over and over till you get in. A more civilized method could be to have an entry queue where if for example 100 people can get in at a time and there are 108 people trying to get in. Then the rest of the 8 are put into a queue with an ETA as well as some sort of countdown timer which tells you that a seat is now open. It is actually not that complicated a system this one, a number of busy gaming websites(gamespot.com for example) have download softwares where people are put on a download queue, given an ETA and when space opens up a certain amount of time to activate their download!


4) "Change the SOLAR course selection time from 45 minutes to something lower, 30 Minutes or 15 Minutes" : I presume that the SOLAR server can have statistics where it shows the average user time on the website and to cut out the confounds we can only consider those instances where the user actually made it to the payment agreement page and wasn't there just to look around/got kicked out due to malfunction etc(Credit to Lorend for this one!). It would for one encourage people to do all their homework(course calendar, MTT) from before and once they get in to quickly get their courses and leave! Similarly if this is done in conjunction with the aforementioned waitlist/course seats systems people will spend less time browsing around!



If I have missed any please type them out as #5, #6 and so on! The previous policy paper had 20 recommendations, Hence I could do with some help!

All of the above mentioned recommendations are ones that require additional software programming and/or comparatively minute amount of additional bandwidth/storage for the registrar servers! This could easily be accomplished by much much lesser amount of money then spending 20 Million for an entirely new system! McMaster is an institution that prides itself on innovation, why not in this case?


Looking forward to your replies!



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On a sidenote, can any Computer Engineering students tell me if web based modules like Fujitsu Interstage(which is used in Korean Universities) or something Similar can be hired to beef up the current system on a seasonal basis?

All those things sound like they would be gifts from God after today's hell of trying to access SOLAR and change courses/times

in addition to all this, i want to ask one question:
What if the students make these changes, like the Computer Science/Engineering students! I am sure most of them would know asp, php, javascript and html right? If we can gather these people from the McMaster student body or even other people who are willing to work for free, then we can make a schedule to address all issues one by one and make sure that even when the term/year ends, there are other people to carry it forward.

SOLAR is screaming to be corrected, we simply cannot ignore it giving the excuse that we only use it once a year

I asked my sister to try and help me log on from Mississauga because I'm overseas right now and the connection isn't that super all the time. She got so mad, and kept using CAPITALS and yelling and panicking.

1. I think having a greater student capacity would be more appropriate. I don't know the technical aspects of this but I believe we can accomodate more students and would like to see that occur.

2. Having days sectioned to different years would also be more fitting. First year students don't have that hard a time getting into SOLAR for the first time when their course selections open up as opposed to Thursday. We could have one day for all 5th and 4th years, 3rd years etc, so that no Faculties are disadvantaged.

3. We could have the option of selecting our preferred timeslot during our first attempt at SOLAR. My sister showed me how ROSI automatically generates a timetable when you choose a course, so I don't think this is too impractical. This would also force more students to be more proactive and plan ahead. We would avoid things such as students waiting for 8:30 time slots to open up when they're most likely full because people aren't making the effort/haven't been able to log on to drop them.

4. I second wait lists. We should also have a system like Ryerson's where they state what professor is teaching the course. While this may make things more competitive, let's face it - they're already pretty competitive as it is.

I'll have more later.

Originally Posted by goodnews.inc

.

1. I think having a greater student capacity would be more appropriate. I don't know the technical aspects of this but I believe we can accomodate more students and would like to see that occur.

That is the big problem that I suppose cannot be addressed until Mac gets a new server, and that as I mentioned before costs $20-30 Million. So this point is for now implausible. The problem is that SOLAR at the turn of the century was made for a much much smaller student body, since then the numbers have increased exponentially hence so have the problems.

2. Having days sectioned to different years would also be more fitting. First year students don't have that hard a time getting into SOLAR for the first time when their course selections open up as opposed to Thursday. We could have one day for all 5th and 4th years, 3rd years etc, so that no Faculties are disadvantaged.

This is already done for the first course selection and is easily done because courses are reserved for different faculties/years. However this time around the only reason I can think of is that it would probably be unfair towards who ever is shunted off towards the latter half of the queue simply because they belong to a certain year. Since this is the second opening of SOLAR after timetables are released, I would think it is fair that we have a free for all; however unpractical it is for the system itself.

3. We could have the option of selecting our preferred timeslot during our first attempt at SOLAR. My sister showed me how ROSI automatically generates a timetable when you choose a course, so I don't think this is too impractical. This would also force more students to be more proactive and plan ahead. We would avoid things such as students waiting for 8:30 time slots to open up when they're most likely full because people aren't making the effort/haven't been able to log on to drop them.

I'm pretty sure two years ago this is exactly how things were done, people chose their cores and tutorials one the very first day. Mac must have a reason why it decided to make the process less time consuming. Hypothetically the automatic timetable that MAC introduced last summer works pretty well, though with sessionals being laid off and number of sections being shortened and classes being cancelled people have more conflicts. But alot of traffic is in search of courses opening up or people not wanting 830 classes, which will still be an issue with either system!

4. I second wait lists. We should also have a system like Ryerson's where they state what professor is teaching the course. While this may make things more competitive, let's face it - they're already pretty competitive as it is.

People already can find out via the MTT what Prof is teaching what section of which course. Most people(like myself) already know how to see which prof is teaching which section and then try getting oneself into it. An Infamous example is Dr Childs Engineering 1Z05.
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@Afzal, My friend figuring out SOLAR issues would require more then basic Html, MyPhp and SQL knowledge! First and foremost there are privacy concerns that Mac is very apprehensive about! Secondly I don't think they would invite a random group of students to volunteer and mess around with their million dollar systems!

Solar needs some highly professional help. I wouldn't be surprised if the labour costs for any software stuff go close to or over $100,000. Assuming that actually is what happens!

But I dunno, I don't think the MSU will unanimously endorse having students to solve SOLAR, because even for its own projects it prefers expert help(1280). But what the Engineers could do is to apply a tender to the Registrars office when and if they ask for companies!

Originally Posted by Afzal

I am sure most of them would know asp, php, javascript and html right?

HAHAHAHAHA LOLOLOL!!

Believe me man, you will encounter a lot of engineers who have never heard of HTML before. People thought it was magic when I'd make a table on the WebCT discussion board using html tags.

Solving the SOLAR issue, to me, can only be accomplished through one step

1) Nuke SOLAR.

Problem solved. Well...kinda...it sounded a lot more amazing at 3:45 in the morning the day registration opened.

Originally Posted by c.erl

Solving the SOLAR issue, to me, can only be accomplished through one step

1) Nuke SOLAR.

Problem solved. Well...kinda...it sounded a lot more amazing at 3:45 in the morning the day registration opened.

Lol Come on, that would be an Epic Fail! Isn't that what NDP is often accused of? Having no touch with rational reality or constructive efforts? Yess I said that! OH snaaappp

p.s: I would stoop to any level to get input as you can clearly see; and attacking party loyal leftists is a brilliant underhand tactic!

Originally Posted by c.erl

Solving the SOLAR issue, to me, can only be accomplished through one step

1) Nuke SOLAR.

Problem solved. Well...kinda...it sounded a lot more amazing at 3:45 in the morning the day registration opened.

why were you on at 3:45 in the morning the day registration opened? D=, didn't it only open at like 8:00am (although everyone I know took all day before they got on and changed anything they could)

Originally Posted by PockyWarrior

why were you on at 3:45 in the morning the day registration opened? D=, didn't it only open at like 8:00am (although everyone I know took all day before they got on and changed anything they could)

I suppose he is referring to the registration day in July?

Anyywaysss Back to topic! Soo as Achilles said in Troy : IS THERE NO ONE!

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Lol Come on, that would be an Epic Fail! Isn't that what NDP is often accused of? Having no touch with rational reality or constructive efforts? Yess I said that! OH snaaappp

p.s: I would stoop to any level to get input as you can clearly see; and attacking party loyal leftists is a brilliant underhand tactic!

You know how to get me in a serious mood...attack my politics

(I like how you used the French smiley after talking about leftists)

The problem is that, I'm a technologically disadvantaged History and Poli Sci major...and the bulk of the problems seem to revolve around the server the school has chosen to host the site it uses when it comes to course selection.

Sure, we can put together different statements and codes of conduct and the whatnot, but to me, the only option we can take now is action. The school must change the way it registers students because the system in place is completely inferior. We as the students should be pressuring the correct individuals to do this through our union and through individual initiative.

To be completely honest, I don't know a vast majority about the different programs that are used and the servers that host the sites, but I do know that, for the amount of money we pay every year for the privilege of getting a degree we need in our credentialist society, we should have course selection that is smoother then velvet.

I like the approach you're taking and its always good to organize to forward your goals, but I can't help with the technical aspect at all. From my perspective, the technical aspect is where all the problems lie.

Cool beans, brother, cool beans.

P.S. Yeah, I did mean the initial selection day a million years ago.