CST4900 Internship Journal [The Beginning]

My internship is at the offices of the MTA - NYCT, with the developer of an award-winning web application called DRAW.

DRAW and its significance

The DRAW program was originally conceived several years ago to consolidate the volumes of CADD architectural drawings depicting the entirety of the NYC Subway track system. Before the deployment of DRAW over the NYCT company intranet, employees such as station planners, signal maintainers, track inspectors and engineers were relegated to searching tediously through stacks of paper plans and drawings to locate the individual sections of rail about which they required information. With the implementation of DRAW, this process has become a simple and efficient matter of clicking on an appropriate link on a dynamically generated web page to navigate through the comlex system of detailed graphic representations. All of the CADD drawings of the NYCT system have been digitally scanned and centralized into a database of TIFF files that serves as the heart of the DRAW application.

As more employees became aware of the clear advantage in utility that was being offered by the DRAW program, the application began to be used more heavily while simultaneously expanding its features and modules to incorporate other databases and functions that were closely tied to the maintenance, repair, and development of the NYCT track system. Several versions have been deployed since its original unveiling. The newest version, 6.4, required a newer and more powerful server to accomodate a growing number of users and ever-expanding features.

The Internship

My task as an intern with the DRAW program developer has been multifold. For the first few weeks, I spent quite a bit of time studying the program modules and databases. The ASP programming language was new to me and far different from anything I had studied at City Tech, although some of the VB scripts were familiar looking and provided some insight into the inner workings of certain aspects of ASP and the logic behind the building of dynamic web pages. Another thing I noticed right away was the heavy use of HTML code as well as SQL commands. I knew right away that my current and previous classes had provided me with essential knowledge to fulfill my aspirations of someday working as a programmer or application developer.

After a couple of days of familiarizing myself with the application as well as the code behind it, it was time to begin the first of my assignments. For the next six weeks (in March and April), I was to help "migrate" the users of the old version of the program over to the new version and the new server. This was a fairly simple process (in theory) of removing old shortcuts, establishing a new connection or link to the server, optimizing file associations, and training users on the newly incorporated features and aspects of the program. In actuality, the process was not always so simple, as several problems were encountered. Some were recurring and some specific to individuals and their PC settings. We frequently had difficulties opening up TIFF files with the preferred viewer, which was Microsoft Office Document Imaging. Other programs such as Apple QuickTime or Windows Picture and Fax Viewer would repeatedly take control of the TIFF images and disable any other programs from opening up the files. We found several "fixes" to this problem; one simply involved establishing administrative rights on the PC and forcing the files to associate themselves as MS Office Document Imaging files, another necessitated finding certain browser add-ons that needed to be adjusted in the "Tools" menu of the browser. Some user accounts were stored on a different server than the standard TRANSIT domain; for these, we had to contact the system administrator of their group to log in remotely to the PC and enable us to change the settings.

Finally, around early May, a couple of suggestions came in from our users regarding ways to make the program even more beneficial by incorporating more types of data and making it available across the NYCT intranet through the DRAW server. Although one of the proposed enhancements turned out to be a disappointment (those in charge did not want to release their databases to us), another one has been given a “green light” by the department concerned, and they have agreed to cooperate with our efforts by incorporating their database into our program – if they approve of the final result. This has been my work of the last several weeks, and will probably keep me occupied throughout the summer.