The performance issues we all experienced yesterday were caused by a bug in the Oracle database which serves Blackboard. Upon discussing the situation with Oracle Support, a patch was received to address this bug. The Oracle patch was installed successfully. myUSF/Blackboard was back online at 9:45 PM, after 1:45 of downtime.
Even though we are in a better position with respect to performance than yesterday, we are far from optimal. We continue to work with Oracle and Blackboard to identify and resolve the cause(s) of the database degradation.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Wasn’t this new set up tested before it went to production?
January 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Most likely yes, however one tends to find the problems with a system durig periods of extreme usage, such as when 40,000+ students and 300+ teachers are hitting it setting classes up through it.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:24 am
As of 1000 today (Wednesday), I notice that it is slow again. Last term, this problem did not occur as often as it is now. I wonder if it was really wise to switch versions in the middle of the academic year. Anyway, I hope that you can find the right insecticide for the bug…
January 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
“Sluggish” seems optimistic. I cannot access the Courses page at all either.
Welcome and myUSF seem to load fine.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
They should extend the drop add date.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Having worked in I.T. as a programmer for nearly 10 years at two colleges (not at USF), I can confirm that one can test for everything except real life.
When it’s time to move an update into the production environment, you have two choices: to do it or not, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, saving upgrades for more convenient times can buy you a lot more trouble than going ahead with the system maintenance at somewhat inconvenient times.
It’s just like deciding between waiting until you have 20 things wrong with your car before taking it to a mechanic, or taking care of things as they are needed.
And if you think this glitch is troublesome, you should try wiping out an entire payroll system at tax time and dealing with *that* fallout…
January 11th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
But really, shouldn’t the upgrade have better features than the previous version? The discussion boards look harder to use than previously because it is harder to see the string of messages as an overview before you go into a particular post.
January 11th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
It is much harder to use and there is a lot of space taken up by the search features. The COLLECT/read is gone. You can’t alphabetize class rosters within each thread. So many of the new things are just change that seems for change’s sake or full-employment for the BB programmers. So far I find 7.0 not only slow but a poorer learning environment. I have two classes. We are using yahoo for discussion as it is more responsive. I hope USF didn’t pay a whole lot of money for a less functional system. You can search for your queries on google and read archives at other universities get support on the oddness of the new boards.
Also, for those of us with some difficulty reading there are issues relating to low vision.
January 11th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Agreed. The Discussion Board is just laborious and time-consuming now.
Is there a way to display all the posts with all the threads?
January 16th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I want to add my vote that the current update is a poorer quality experience for students and faculty as well. The performance is much slower and sluggish. The discussion board is a joke, bad design getting worse. In addition, there are less text processing tools available - now even adding a working web link requires HTML code! Also, seasoned IT pros will tell you, let the early adopters serve as the guinea pigs for testing, then use the feedback to determine if it’s worthwhile for your mission critical organizations.
February 18th, 2007 at 9:08 am
This site has been running extremely slowly over the last couple of days. It even froze during my exam on Friday evening. I ran the ‘check system’ component that is on the web site and it worked okay. I can initially get into the site, but when I drill down further it gets s l o w er and ss ll oo ww ee rr…
February 18th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
This thing is a ridiculously slow pig. How the heck do they expect anybody to get any work down. It just keeps hanging up when you try to access the page - and guess what? No weekend telephone support.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:22 am
SOMEBODY please fix this thing! It was working so slow this weekend (again) and I agree that the discussion board has lost out on features instead of gained any. The last two years it worked fine without much interference, it must be this 7.0.