About the Geological Sciences On-Line Calendar

The Geological Sciences on-line calendar was designed, coded, and set up by Tom Heil. It is a Cold Fusion application running on an ATN server. The ability to change the calendar is restricted to certain staff members, but the links below show the look and feel of the interface.

Two types of events are available: notes and reservations. Each is stored in coded form in a text file. It would have been easier to develop the application using a relational database, but this format meets the needs of the users better, and provides good performance.

Notes are a bit of text associated with a certain day, like "Halloween". The form to add notes is straightforward. The form to delete notes dynamically creates a list of all the notes in the system, and includes automatic, user-cancelable erasure of notes over six months old.

Reservations have a date or dates and a time, as well as a title, contact person, phone number, and other information. There are several types, including single day, weekly, and monthly events. The selection form lists all seven types, and a typical reservation form indicates the required information.. The reservation deletion form is similar to the note deletion form. Reservations are also purged six months after they have ended. Note the use of distinct colors on each of the different classes of forms. A feedback page confirms the addition or deletion after it has been performed.

The system includes input verification. It checks to be sure that all required fields are present, that ending dates are greater than starting dates, that weekly events span more than one week, that phone numbers are numeric, and others.

The monthly calendar pages are dynamically generated on demand. The system processes the contents of the note and reservation files, determining which are applicable to the current month. Next, for recurring events, it determines which days those events fall on, and generates an array of notes and reservations for the current month. Each array item is then printed on the appropriate day.

Comments, suggestions and concerns about the calendar can be addressed to Tom Heil