CONGO – And so we go to alpha testing

On Sunday night I released CONGO v2 into alpha testing. The first client to be using the new platform wants to be up and running on January 1st, and this is on-schedule. The last couple weeks haven’t quite been a death march, but there has been a helluva lot of code written, checked in, and tested. The log of messages posted to congo-dev tells the tale. While November wasn’t as intense as October, we still did over 105 commits against the server. The CONGO v2 codebase is rivalling the original system in size, though now it is entirely java based (the old system was part PHP, part Java).
I’m pleased with how the system is coming along. An entirely new payment interface, refactored contact information, and a new Events module for managing activities at conventions is worked into the new model (though not all of it is complete yet). I’m satisfied with the choice to move to using Struts2 as my web framework, but my dissatisfaction with OGNL grows daily. Why OGNL was necessary for the struts tag library, when the expression language (EL) was around is beyond me. For most of my code I’m replacing struts tags with JSTL and assorted libraries, and using EL for referencing action, stack, and session based content.
The next 2 weeks should see the last pieces of functionality falling into place, at which point we go into beta testing. All coding should be done, and we’ll be tuning the system for “go live” on January 1st.
After that? Well, due to the awesome new build structure, I’ll be able to release CONGO v2 for use by other folks. The system is now self-installing and configuring, so setting up a new host to run a convention is an order of magnitude easier than it was in the past. Stay tuned for details on how you can download CONGO and install it for your convention!