Observe is a traditional mult-page application (considered legacy, 13 years

old and widely used) with a frontend using a mixture of jQuery 3.2.1 ,and vue.js JavaScript frameworks using a bootstrap UI

and a backend of PHP 5.6 and MySql 5.6. In an attempt to modernise it, make it more integratable and phase out the legacy code, a new API was developed in Express - Node.js (typescript). Each component comes with its own docker image.



Analyse is a new web application to run advanced psychometric analyse online of the results collected by Observe previously handled by Observe itself in exported excel file templates. Manipulation results data in excel sheets lead to human errors hence realising the need for it to be managed online and anything exported should be for reporting purposes only.



Specs. Analyse comes with an Angular/Bootstrap frontend with the ag-grid plugin to handle the interactive tabular data grids. Backend services include AnalyseR developed in the R language that handles the statistical computations and a group of services to manage the data analyse pipelines developed in C# - .NET Core.  All components are dockerised.

Problem statement



We Analyse allows the end-users of our company Observe to run borderline/cut-score analyse on the student/candidate results to determine adjusted scores and grades. This information is then pushed back to us, Observe to be released to the student via the existing Feedback Mail System. As you can see both these apps are tightly coupled when it comes to the analyse functionality and release of the results to the students.



Problem:



1) The Analyse app plus its integration with the  app via the Observe api is very unstable and is broken in many places.



2) The Observe app is a legacy system and urgently needs an upgrade (PHP 5.6 to 7.x) including its dependencies. It has also been given a new Bootstrap facelift recently that introduced minor UI glitches. It was also noted that it is not yet very mobile friendly.