by David Trussell
Computer Science Director

I was recently reminded in a personal way of the truly global nature of the Internet when I received an e-mail from a teacher in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, requesting advice on new textbooks for her computer science classes. She had searched the Internet, found the UIL web site, and discovered that we recommend the same textbooks for UIL computer science that she currently uses. If nothing else, the Internet has certainly proven true the Disney cliché: it is a small world after all.

One of the most interesting sidenotes to maintaining a web server is watching where the visitors are coming from -- not only Malaysia, but also Canada, Germany, Japan, and numerous other countries. But of course the vast majority of the traffic on the UIL web site originates in Texas, and it’s those more local visitors who our site is intended to serve.

The UIL web server has now been on-line for more than six months without a single significant glitch (knock-ing fervently on wood as I write this). During this time, the system has served more than 3 million individual pages (that’s pages, not people -- most visitors to the site view several pages per visit), and a total of more than 61 gigabytes of data. Our single busiest week of web traffic so far has been the week of Nov. 5, which was the week of state marching band and state cross country, as well as volleyball regional playoffs. During that week alone the server processed more than 300,000 individual page requests. I expect to far surpass that total the week of Feb. 4, which is when reclassification and realignment infor-mation will be released. I am confident the server will handle the traffic spike without a problem, though visitors to the site during the first couple of hours after the R&R release may have to wait a little longer than normal for pages to load.

It’s no accident that our server has recorded better than 99 percent uptime. Careful planning and prepara-tion allowed us to have a seamless transition from the central University of Texas web server in July, and laid the foundation for a server system that would equal the UT server in reliability and performance. Getting started on the right foot was critical, as is diligent monitoring and maintenance. But we also intend to continue in-creasing and improving the services we offer on-line, and we’ve made some important steps in that regard over the past few months.

Regular visitors to the UIL web site are probably already familiar with the built-in search engine, a feature that continues to be accessed more and more. A quality internal search function was not available to us through the UT server, but we were able to implement it almost immediately after moving our site to www.uil.utexas.edu.

Even more important is the capability to provide on-line access to databases. In the UIL office we make extensive use of FileMaker Pro databases, for everything from accounting records to district alignments to the catalog for our drama library. Our server allows us to begin to serve some of this data on-line directly, as well as to collect data directly in a usable format.

We’ve launched three on-line database systems so far, and all three have been very successful. The first of these systems allows coaches in our team sports to submit their team information forms electronically (for those who advance into the regional playoffs and thus have a chance to make it to the state tournament). This saves time and paperwork for our coaches, as well as reducing overtime hours for UIL staff who are involved with preparing state tournament programs. The first test of this system came with the state volleyball tournament in November. Of 20 teams advancing to state, 12 success-fully submitted their forms on-line, a great percentage for a first effort. Many more coaches also submitted on-line forms, but their teams did not advance to state. We’re hoping the numbers will be even higher for our spring sports. Basketball coaches, take note!

The second system allows for electronic reporting of football season records, which is now handled exclu-sively on-line. This affords our football coaches a quick and easy way to report their records without the hassles of typewriters, paper forms or fax machines. Almost 800 coaches have made use of this system so far.

Third, our database of speech and debate judges is now searchable on-line. This provides our speech coaches an easy way to find qualified judges for invitational and/ or district meets, as well as possible contacts to fulfill state meet judging obligations. The database can be searched by event and geographic area; we may add other search criteria as well.

These three systems represent the first steps toward a more interactive web site. Watch for more develop-ments in the months ahead.