Project Pairing reports: Now with column sorting!
Last week, I wrote about a new report I added for the UDC data that shows project pairings “in the wild”. In a comment, Nick effectively killed my weekend. Nick, my wife’s not happy with you. I showed her your picture. Be careful.
The report can now be sorted on columns. Actually, this part was easy to implement.
The hard part is that I noticed something when I started sorting the data on the different columns. I noticed that, while I expected that each pairing should be represented twice, some of them are only represented once. I expected to see, for example, a pairing of ‘ajdt’ and ‘platform’ along with a pairing of ‘platform’ and ‘ajdt’; but I only see one (the latter). I tried several different queries, and even tried more manually assembling the data (the final query is surprisingly simple, yet yields the same results as some of its more complicated cousins). I stumbled into two known MySQL bugs, and (possibly) one unknown one. To ensure that things stayed interesting, I opted to move the main query into a stored procedure (put the Data Tools Project’s SQL editing support into full use (though it was complicated by the fact that I had never once before ever created a stored procedure).
I’ll keep hacking at it, but in the meantime, I’ve made the new version available anyway.
In my efforts to refine the query, I discovered that I had previously been doubling the actual numbers (in my defense, I did state that I thought they felt a little high). That’s been fixed.
Once I can figure out a reasonable home for the queries, I’ll make ‘em available so that Nick can lose a weekend too.
I also spent a little time looking for a visualization package; something that will let me draw a diagram showing the relative proximities of the projects. I did stumble upon a neat little physics package that I figure I can use: each project can be represented as particle, with the number of users represented as the strength of a spring joining the particles. I think it’ll look cool. But, unfortunately, it’s become low priority; at least for the next week or so.
In the meantime, does anybody know of some decent software that can be used to represent this sort of information?
Posted June 23rd, 2008 by Wayne Beaton in category: UDC
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3 Responses to “Project Pairing reports: Now with column sorting!”
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Nick Boldt Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Ironically, I spent almost no time in front of the computer this weekend… so if it’ll help, I’ll bring a bathing suit (and change of clothes) to the Ganymede party on Wednesday and you can push me into the Ottawa River on her behalf.
As to visualization, have you looked at Zest?
Wayne Beaton Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Zest! of course. What was I thinking (or not thinking)?
Eclipse hints, tips, and random musings » Blog Archive » Project Pairing Visualization Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
[...] Nick’s suggestion, I’ve been tinkering with using Zest to visualize the project pairing data that I’ve [...]