The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a US nonprofit consortium of more than 100 colleges and universities providing research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences.
They are the world’s preeminent institution for studying the atmosphere, floods, droughts, thunderstorms, tornados, hurricanes and ultimately their impact on society.
UCAR manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research on behalf of the National Science Foundation. They provide world class resources that are needed to make a significant advancement in our understanding of weather, water and climate.
More information: reinteractive Rails upgrades service.
The Earth Observing Laboratory’s Field Catalog is a web portal that provides tools for real-time asset tracking and direction, mission planning, situational awareness, real time decision making, project documentation and comms between project participants at remote sites; mobile, fixed and airborne. It provides real time information like where to fly, where to place assets, storms, weather information and mapping tools, thus helping with decisions that need to be made by people in the field. They can login to get updates on projects before and during field campaigns which average 6 - 10 weeks.
The application was on Rails 3, which was 10 years old and needed to be upgraded. It was a large project to tackle and so had been put on the back burner multiple times. It was getting to a critical place and potential security issues finally determined that the upgrade could not be put off any longer. Due to lack of internal manpower and general security requirements, UCAR looked to outsource to a professional Rails company to do the upgrades.
“ Our application is used all the time and is mission critical. Our scientists study the weather and get together for team projects. We have airplanes that go and take samples in the air and with the software we track images the aircraft uses to locate the storms they fly to and observe. So it’s important that the app is stable and secure”
Susan Stringer, Software Engineer
UCAR
Having a company with a solid Rails background, with multiple successful projects completed and with great customer references was paramount to UCAR. After a diligent search on the web and multiple interviews, UCAR chose reinteractive for the job and the project swiftly commenced.
The reinteractive team rolled up their sleeves and over a period of several months managed to upgrade 3 of the working applications in the Field Catalog Web Portal, which included three seperate application with Ruby versions as low as 1.9 and Rails versions as low as 3.1. All were upgraded to latest stable versions.
“Having great project management in addition to expert development was really great and kept everything on track. I was surprised and very impressed at how effective this system was. We had standups 4 days a week with the developer writing tests and me testing alongside. The communication was consistent and smooth. It enabled me to really absorb the inner details of the software and I know it a lot better now.”
Susan Stringer, Software Engineer
UCAR
“The intelligence, skill and expertise of the developer was super impressive - his ability to pick up the technicalities so fast and run with them, always willing to answer questions and great at debugging. We finished ahead of schedule and budget, which is almost unheard of in the field of software development.”
Susan Stringer, Software Engineer
UCAR
The Field Catalog Web Portal is now on an updated, highly secure Rails version making future upgrades and maintenance easy to perform.
The upgrade was done ahead of schedule, allowing for additional work to be done in the remaining budget
The project enabled UCAR technical staff to increase knowledge and know-how of the software by being closely involved in the daily stand-ups and testing protocol
Outsourcing the project facilitated a critical upgrade and update project to happen thus increasing performance and confidence of the Field Catalog Web Portal
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