"Darwin push port down again" and again and again..

[Mike Flynn]

HI,

I wasn't sure to reply to an existing post or create a new.  As it's a more general question I've opted for the latter.  I currently don't use either the Network Rail or NRE feeds but I intend to.  The data would allow me to add valuable content to my websites.   

Now, whilst I haven't been using them yet I have been following posts from this forum and it seems to me that the feed from NRE is beset with problems.  Almost every week there's a post saying it's down again or whatever.  I can imagine that for those using the data for their own business or for purposes such as my own, passing on information to the public, there comes a point where it's more trouble than it's worth.

That's my question.  For those who are using the feed is it more trouble than it's worth?

MIke

[Ying Wang]

To be honest. I appreciate these two data feeds as I need data for research purpose. For public information usage, I think it's better than nothing.

在 2016年4月11日星期一 UTC+1上午10:08:16，Mike Flynn写道：

[Mike Flynn]

Hi Ying,

>> To be honest. I appreciate these two data feeds as I need data for research purpose. For public information usage, I think it's better than nothing.

When I start using the feeds I've no doubt that I too will find them very useful.  

I was wondering were there particular problems in particular areas, for example, live train times.  Maybe it's easier just using Darwin LDB if the feeds are going down every so often.  But then maybe there's extra data worth extrapolating?  

I know too that the best way for me to find answers to my question is to get on and find out for myself which I will do.  

Cheers

[petermount]

Well its been stable for 6 days but again around 6pm I start seeing the message count drop off to the point my system thinks there's an issue and reconnects.

When it's up it runs fine, it's just when it does fail it always seems to be out of hours.

[Martin Swanson]

Without wanting to knock all the great work that the community had done, the system availability and data loss are nowhere near sufficient to operate an enterprise grade service.

I've asked a few times to get root cause analysis but it is not forthcoming - to me the architecture / connectivity is problematic and I don't see a desire/funding to improve it.

Every time there is an outage the response is "apologies for the inconvenience". That's no good if you need complete data coverage.

Martin

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[Peter Mount]

I agree. Even though my usage of the feeds is more hobby, & my users know that, I handle my side of things just like I would in my day job. If we have an outage questions would be asked almost immediately.

The worst thing here is like you've started nothing other than an apology appears or is an issue upstream.

Thing is, I'm like a few others are on a mailing list where we see alerts about various systems at nre (link to it is on the nre site) & that's generally quiet - last one was a router fail over which could have effected us but didn't. Anyhow there's been more info on those notifications than here.

[Mike Flynn]

Peter,

>> I agree. Even though my usage of the feeds is more hobby, & my users know that,

There's no doubt the feeds are great resource for hobbyists.  But for me, for example, publishing web sites, I risk alienating both my visitors and the search engines.  My sites would simply be marked down if the content is unreliable.

Martin,

>> Without wanting to knock all the great work that the community had done,

>> nowhere near sufficient to operate an enterprise grade service.

>> I've asked a few times to get root cause analysis but it is not forthcoming - to me the architecture / connectivity is problematic 

>>  I don't see a desire/funding to improve it.

From what I've read and from my own experiences, I agree with all of the above.  Your point about the problematic architecture is an interesting one.  My only experience with messaging systems is this one so I'm no expert but having done a bit of googling on the subject I think the architecture is maybe the right one.  But only if there's good and definitive documentation to go with it.  And good contact routes with the provider.  Of course, it's great work from the community giving working examples, etc., but IMO it's all bit ad hoc and ambiguous.  Just look at all the posts about how to get connected.  Computer systems needn't be difficult to understand.  Indeed the best systems are often the simplest.

The point about desire/funding is also pertinent and is a long running discussion also with many posts on this forum on the subject.

Thanks for the comments.  This is the kind of thing I was looking for.  I know there is a fair bit of work involved getting the right setup to handle the feeds, both NR and NRE, and I want to avoid wasting my time.  In summary though I think for me it probably will be worth the effort and, of course, I can then decide which bits are worth using or not.

Cheers :)

[petermount]

On Saturday, 16 April 2016 09:34:50 UTC+1, Mike Flynn wrote:

Peter,

>> I agree. Even though my usage of the feeds is more hobby, & my users know that,

There's no doubt the feeds are great resource for hobbyists.  But for me, for example, publishing web sites, I risk alienating both my visitors and the search engines.  My sites would simply be marked down if the content is unreliable.

I think that's even worse for App developers as their user's are more likely to affect the applications ranking within the relevant store.

That's one reason (the other is time) why I've not looked at App's, even though I've been asked for them.

But you are right on the search engine front - it's easier to loose ranking than to gain it.

Peter

[Michael Erskine]

Isn't there a commercial option with better uptime and a Service Level
Agreement?

Regardless, when the PushPorts data isn't available you could degrade
your service gracefully (with appropriate warnings to users), drop
back to timetabled schedule, and perhaps augment with a TD feed or
live departures info if available. If it's down for everyone then
you're no worse off than your competitors!

[Chris Northwood]

iirc the commercial option doesn't have a Service Level Agreement (but I guess has better uptime as it doesn't go through the Open Data platform? I suppose we don't know unless we know where the fragility is, if it's in the Open Data platform, or the upstream service). I'm also led to believe it's not exactly the same as the upstream one, but I'm not sure what the architecture is.

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[Peter Hicks]

Hi Chris

Customer Information Systems (CIS) at stations use the Push Port, so instability there will be quickly noticed.  You can tell what's at fault, generally - if there's a notification from NRE sent out about the Push Port and/or associated Darwin services being down, it's something upstream.  If you don't see a notifictaion, it's likely the Open Data platform.

Peter

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[Mike Flynn]

Michael, 

>> If it's down for everyone then you're no worse off than your competitors! 

But that's my point exactly.  If the open data service isn't as good as the commercial option then you WOULD be worse off than your competitors.

Regarding the 'commercial option' I've only limited knowledge of what's actually available.  When I did look into it I remember thinking this involves more than just money, e.g., applications pending acceptance, etc, etc.

>> you could degrade your service gracefully (with appropriate warnings to users),

Accomodating an unreliable open data service is an option but obviously not the best. 

My thinking is you're right in one respect, you are no worse off than your open data competitors, but if you want to provide an industry competing service you'll need to be looking at the commercial options aswell.  If this is true then it does sort of go against of what open data is meant to be all about if you know what I mean.

But, for me, it is still probably worth the effort making use of the open feeds.  The main downside as I see is that some work may ultimately prove a bit of a waste of time when the service turns out to be less than consistent and reliable, especially when provided without proper documentation and support.

[Michael Erskine]

Full disclosure: I wrote the first Darwin-driven CIS for Chiltern Rail
in my role here at work for KeTech Systems Ltd.

I don't really know the amount of uptime and downtime we have on our
commercial Darwin feeds as the maintenance is done by other teams. All
I know is I don't see much about it on the support calls databases. I
love the fact that I can get TD feeds of live test data for free that
we used to pay T-Sharp loads for (via TMIS)