Forum OpenACS Q&A: does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work?

1: does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work?

Posted by Justin Palmer on 07/16/02 11:49 AM

For a while now I've been building in OpenACS 3.2.5 and have just started playing with the 4.5 release. I'm really interested in getting the calendar and bookmark modules working. There are some bugs with the bookmarks that are addressed in the SDM's bug reports (can't delete links from a couple of angles), but I'm having bigger problems with the calendar. The add-an-event pages don't work, specifically calendar-item- add. Here's a snippet of the error I'm getting.

Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSDB, "Query 
was not a statement returning rows.")
    while executing
"ns_pg_bind 0or1row nsdb0 {
	select timespan__new (    
					timestamp(:start_date),
					timestamp(:end_date)
	)

I assume the bad functions are getting called in some other sourced Tcl proc, but I'm having trouble hunting it down. I'm used to the old days where it was mostly one-URL, one-file. So is it just me or are other people having this problem? And if others are, can someone give me pointers as to where to start digging in order to fix this

2: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Jorge Garcia on 07/16/02 11:53 AM

This is an issue with PG 7.2

The timestamp function has changed in the new version of PG.

There is a patch in the SDM.

3: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 07/16/02 04:08 PM

Yes, and the version in CVS should also work with PG 7.2.

4: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Justin Palmer on 07/17/02 08:15 AM

Thanks a lot. Both fixes worked. I have a more general question, however, that I'd like to bounce off the community.

I'm hoping to use OpenACS for a student community web site here at Georgetown -- a student-run web portal. Ideally we'd use the dotLRN software to support clubs and other student groups. I was going to build this using the old OpenACS until noticed how much great work's been done on OpenACS 4.x.

Right now I'm hacking together a demo using the current OpenACS 4.5 stuff, but it seems to me (at least with 4.5 for Postgres) that bugs are being fixed by leaps and bounds daily. For example, the forums reply-to by email functionality takes the subject line a user types to mean a list of strings to send mail to locally... And the link to receive email updates doesn't exist. And the calendar's view by week is sketchy... Etc. I don't mean to criticize; I bet you all shred those bugs really, really soon!

So my question is a mix of timeline and a solicitation for advice. 😊 Is there a difference in terms of stability between the Postgres and Oracle OpenACS? The dotLRN? What's the timeline looking like for a reasonably bug-free OpenACS 4.5 look like?

5: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Janine Ohmer on 07/17/02 07:01 PM

As far as I know, the Oracle version is slightly more stable in many places. This is not from my own observation, but from what others have told me.

Calendar was never quite finished by arsDigita. Somewhere I think I read that Ben was working on it, or going to be working on it, as part of the dotLRN effort. So hopefully it will be cleaned up soon.

6: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 07/17/02 08:44 PM

The core for both PG and Oracle are on about the same basis in terms of stability. There are some packages that are in slightly worse shape for PG. On the other hand there's a community-developed package called "edit this page", a kind of "content-management lite", that at the moment only support PG ("ETP V2" will support both). So there's give and take.

dotLRN is still under active development, and the port to PG trails Oracle development. If you track it you'll see that the Oracle version is still a moving target, though the PG version does indeed have to move further before completion.

Sloan is planning to use it this fall under Oracle and the PG version should be in pretty good shape by then. If you try to use it for what you're describing this fall you'll still be in "early achiever" status but things should be hanging together quite nicely.

7: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 07/17/02 09:09 PM

Justin,

Some of the bugs you mention are indeed already fixed, or are
bugs in documentation. For example, you need to mount the
notifications package to get the notifications links to work. Just
mount it somewhere on your site.

Calendar/PG has made good progress. I have indeed been
working on it. I've completely rewritten the widget rendering
procs, but I haven't changed the data model much. I've attempted
to start making more sense of the concept of multiple calendars
per package - a good idea, but a poor implementation right now.
Calendar/PG should be close to workable, and I'm happy to take
bug reports on it.

8: Response to does the calendar module in OACS 4.5 work? (response to 1)

Posted by Caroline Meeks on 07/17/02 09:33 PM

What is the SDM number? Looks like I may have the same or related bug with my latest oracle version.

Thanks