Tag: MySQL

Create DB Table from .SQL (dump) file

Posted on by Matt Danskine

Not a really complex thing, but something that comes in handy if you’re moving data around and need to quickly create MySQL db tables through PHP.

 

 

 Pretty simple to use.  Just place the function at the top of your page (or at least somewhere higher up the file than when you call it) and give it the name (path included) to the .sql file. 

Something like:

create_table(“path_to_file/dump.sql”);

Creates tables with or without data.  Simply takes whatever kind of sql dump you give it and re-creates the database or table it came from.

Enjoy.

DQP (The Degree Qualifications Profile)

DQP (The Degree Qualifications Profile)

Posted on by Matt Danskine

The DQP Project in Oregon is a joint effort of all seven Oregon University System (OUS) institutions and the state’s seventeen independent community colleges to develop the Degree Qualifications Profile for Oregon. The DQP Project in Oregon will provide a descriptive curricular framework for describing institutions’ degree outcomes across the state, both in their unique characters and in their shared aspects. The project relates directly to the missions of each institution to support their students’ success during college, upon graduation, and in transitions within the Oregon educational system. This statewide partnership of educational institutions has the active support from both the Oregon University System (OUS) Chancellor and the Oregon Community Colleges and Workforce Development (CCWD) Commissioner.”

Now that we have the “official explanation”, here’s why I’m talking about it.  I have been hired for the duration of the DQP grant to act as DQP Web Applications Developer working on-site at Lane Community College.  The project is pretty cool.  Lots of technology and lots of awesome people in the IT department at Lane.  

I started full time with them early in December 2012 and will be there until sometime mid-2015 working on this and other related projects.  The DQP is my core responsibility, so that’s what I’ll talk about here.  I’m going to break it up by section though.  Otherwise this would be one really long post.  

The website itself is set up so that member institutions have one place to go to get and store information on the DQP program.  There is a public side (with public data for everyone to see) and a secure side (where the institutions go to input data that feeds the public side).  

screenshot_16

The design of the site is pretty basic.  Logo, mega-menu, breadcrumbs, custom PHP stuff, footer menu…  The entire site layout is CSS with tables being used ONLY for tabular data.  Just the way it’s supposed to be.  I took a lot of time to make sure it loads properly in recent browsers (back to IE 8) and loads quickly considering how much “stuff” is going on behind the scenes.  

Stay tuned for posts about specific areas of the website.  It’s pretty cool stuff.  

If you want, you can check out the DQP at http://www.oregondqp.org

Morning Glory Inn - Roseburg Oregon

Morning Glory Inn – Roseburg Oregon

Posted on by Matt Danskine

Morning Glory Inn was a bed and breakfast way out in the country near Roseburg.  Right on the Coos Bay Wagon Trail, actually.  You could sit on the porch and practically hear the horse drawn wagons going  by full of kids with cholera and stuff.  (Just kidding on the cholera thing, but it was right on the Coos Bay Wagon Trail.)

The site was a pretty early one in my career, but the design was really good.  It had a small MySQL database for local activities that the owner took care of and another one for the Quilter’s Nook where she scheduled quilting parties.  Not really my cup of tea, but it was a cool little database.

The “Tour our beautiful Inn” link took you to a page with descriptions of the different rooms for rent and each room’s page had a full 360 degree virtual tour when those were really hard to do.  I know, any dummy with an iPhone can do them now, but back in the day it took expensive equipment and a lot of know how.

All in all, it was a fun little site.  I wouldn’t mind doing more of them, or even a hotel/motel website.  If you need one of those, definitely give me a call.  I can help.  Even if you have one of those funky corporate ones from your franchise.  They work great for some things, but they never capture the local flavor.

Goin' Postal - Roseburg Oregon

Goin’ Postal – Roseburg Oregon

Posted on by Matt Danskine

Goin’ Postal and Copy Copy Shop is a locally owned franchise that does everything shipping related, like packing your packages, sending it by the best carrier, holding your mail, renting post office boxes…  All that stuff.  Copy Copy Shop, obviously, is a copy shop.  Color copies, zillions of them?  No problem.

One pretty cool thing I did custom for them was adding a Google search bar that you can paste any tracking number from any carrier into and Google will sort out who the carrier is and show you where it’s at.  Oh, two cool things.  The icons on the bottom of the picture have a hover over action.  When your mouse goes over them, a tool-tip-like window pops up telling you about the service you’re hovering over.  Pretty slick.

I also gave them custom email addresses that customers can send documents to be printed.  Nothing amazing there, but some of those documents can be HUGE.  My server handles it no problem and I was able to give him a disk quota big enough to not run out of space after a few of those HUGE files.

If you need to ship your Christmas gifts, or anything really, I highly recommend Dave at Goin’ Postal.  He’s local and he’ll do a good job for you at a fair price.  Much better than the UPS Store.  None of the money you give them stays local.  That’s bad.

Atrio Health Plans – Database Work

Posted on by Matt Danskine

Atrio was a client of BBG Marketing, a local company I do a lot of maintenance and back end coding work for.  They came to me with Atrio because the database was having some issues and they needed to be able to get the drug information for their plans to display properly on their website.  Every month I would receive a couple monster text files that needed to be imported into their MySQL database.  Once the initial coding was done it was pretty easy.  Just a matter of backing up the database, blanking it out, then importing the new text files.

Atrio Healthplans - Custom Prior Authorization Drug Info database

Atrio had a change of leadership a couple years ago and started using a different company to do their website.  It’s ugly as hell now, and not cross browser compatible.  Good thing I’m not looking for a Medicare Supplement plan.  I can’t see their contact info in their header because I’m on a Mac.  Pretty sloppy.

Don’t let your website only be seen properly by people on one browser, or one kind of computer.  Cross browser compatibility is important these days.  More and more people are on Macs.  Even more are finally tired of Internet Explorer and all its problems and are using Chrome, or Firefox, or even Opera.  You need someone who tests cross platform and with multiple browsers to make sure your website is usable by all the people who want to give you money.