2002 - cesnet

18 System for Dealing with OperatingIssues and RequestsThe Request Tracker (RT) system is intended for coordinating work on problemsand requests. The system allows monitoring of the development of a request,participating in work on this request and providing information about results.The main task of the system is to inform the group working on the given issueabout the contributions of individual group members and the current status.We use the system to coordinate the operating team of the CESNET2 network aswell as for other related purposes.18.1 Work ProgressIn 2002, we planned to transfer the database part of the system to a standaloneserver. However, we could not perform this transfer due to the temporary lackof investment resources. Thus, we reassessed the material requirements of theproject instead, and decided to at least upgrade the existing server.To be specific, we added a second processor, i.e., we employed two 800 MHzprocessors instead of a single 500 MHz processor, and expanded the memoryto the maximum of 512 MB. We moved the original processor to a developmentworkstation, which could now function as the front-end of the whole system ina critical situation, thus significantly boosting the total performance.Other tasks included continuing of system modifications according to therequests determined by the operation and collaboration with our foreign colleagues.In this sphere, we managed, for example, to implement the conversionof all commonly used national character encodings to a single internal encoding.Besides the clarity and readability of the messages sent (both within themail interface and the Web interface, of course), content-based searching nowworks as well.An important step in the international collaboration field is that we becameinvolved in the small team of system localizers. In the near future, users will enjoythe Czech language directly on the system level in RT version 3 (at the Webinterface, the appropriate language will be selected automatically based on thelanguage preferrence specified by the user).The current development version of the system contains a slight modificationin the management of access rights. It offers user-definable items and the currentsystem of keywords (formerly area) is hidden, instead. This ongoing modificationcaused a delay in the planned migration of the old Trouble Ticket system.188 High-speed National Research Network and its New Applications 2002