OpenMRS Overview Stuff

After doing a bit of exploration through the OpenMRS project, my partner David and I have compiled a guided list of useful information concerning the project. Here is a fancy-looking listing of the information (format inspired by Austin Farmer).

Purpose

The purpose of the project is to provide an open source “software platform and...reference application” that allows people with no prior programming experience to create and maintain medical records.

People

There isn’t any information about how many people are working on the project readily available on the OpenMRS site, but the GitHub repository shows 195 contributors.

Activity

The project was most active from 2011 to 2013, but it is still fairly active, currently averaging about one commit per day.

Where to Start

The first thing I would do in order to start helping would be to review the wiki to more closely familiarize myself with some aspects of the project, while looking for typographical errors in hopes of making some early contribution.

Useful Documentation

The wiki has a collection of how-to articles, as well as other collections of reference materials.

Issue Tracking

The OpenMRS website has an “Issues” tab on its horizontal menu that has all raised issues and possible bugs. There are a lot of items in the list of issues raised, where some are being worked on, some have been worked on and are waiting to be re-assessed and tested. There is also detailed information about every issue raised, what kind of issue it is and it’s priority.

Download & Installation

Downloading the product would take about 8 minutes or more depending on your internet connection, and the installation may also take about 7 minutes. Which makes it a total of 15 minutes, but it could be more depending on the internet connection and may be other factors that can hinder or slow any installation on a particular machine.

Communication

OpenMRS wiki has a Developer’s guide under which there is Developer Meeting. Developers meet periodically to discuss technical issues or any technical aspects around OpenMRS.

-Craig Warner

Post One 2: The Sequel

The journey continues, in spite of the storm.

In class on Wednesday we had a good bit of discussion about the nature of a contract for the class. This contract is to be something between the members of the groups in the class, and will provide some structure of standards for communication, interaction, and work done by the individuals. It's all very tedious and boring, but it is an important component in assessing feedback so I guess we'll talk about it. 

As we discussed some different characteristics of a "good" student/teammate/developer, there was a strong emphasis on ideas related to communication. I think that this is important, as communication tends to be one place in which groups of students frequently fall short. Specifying effective methods of communication within a group, and identifying strategies for appropriate communication is important for any group, as it provides the basis of accountability for the students within the group. The ways in which communication is handled also contributes to the nature of the group. I believe that any good contract would specify methods of communication to be used for official interactions, and what kind of language, etc. is appropriate in those interactions. 

Another idea that came up multiple times was the idea of accountability for the work done by each member in a group. No one wants to carry their group member through a course. A notion of "equal contribution" was brought up, and I think it is worth looking at. Every line of code and word of a document does not correlate to another of the same, and so it's important to factor more than volume alone when evaluating someone's work. It will be important for group members to discuss any issues they have so that progress can continue being made, perhaps expressed as part of some sort of weekly To-Do List or something similar. I think that evaluating whether or not members are contributing equal work will be best done through conversations, though, due to the nature of the work. 

All in all, I am interested to see what form the contract will take. I'm also excited to look further into OpenMRS and to see who I will be working with.

-Craig 

Post One: First Looks

Hello.

This is the first post of many to follow my journey through CSC 486, which should be an interesting one considering what I have gathered about the course during the first week of classes. The course is titled Software Engineering, and in it we will be attempting to contribute to some Open Source projects while exploring the FOSS culture. I am looking forward to the class, as I feel that it will cover a lot of valuable material and provide semi-structured exploration into facets of industry that no other course in the Computer Science program are able to.

Dr. Jadud suggested several projects for the class to consider for the course. I think that they are all interesting, and I would be willing to work on any of them. However, if I had to determine the most and least interesting projects to me out of the list, I would have to choose OpenMRS and OctoPrint, respectively. 

I think that the mission of the OpenMRS project is admirable and just awesome, and I think much of the class likely shares my interest in the opportunity to try and help something that will help so many people. To take a step in the other direction, I am not personally very interested in the OctoPrint project because I'm not very interested in 3D-printing myself. I think that 3D-printing has, is, and will continue to revolutionize the world, and it's really cool, but I don't see myself being very involved with it.

At any rate, I'm sure that this will be a course to remember. I anticipate blank stares, zombie-like groans, stress, conversation, and all sorts of hi-jinks, and I'm eager to get started.



-Craig Warner