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Welcome to the NGS Beta Testing Web Site

The motivation for this web site came from the need to organize and document the projects that have been proposed to or are underway at the National Geodetic Survey. This site supports one of the last stages in the development process, namely the beta testing of new NGS web applications. This is where NGS will put up new and evolving applications so that NGS staff and limited members of the user community users can interact with them and give us feedback on usability and functionality.

This is part of our plan to bring more structure to the software development process and to engage the user community. People will be able to test applications before they become an official NGS Product and notify NGS of any serious issues before these applications go live.

An ulterior motive of the site is to educate the users on the concept of using prototypes to help define requirements and design software. The prototype concept is a valuable tool in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). For the purpose of understanding the functionality of this web site within the culture of NGS, there are three major phases of software life cycle:

  • Design and Development , often referred as alpha, where change is ongoing and prototypes are used to help users and programmers define software requirements. This user group is primarily inside of NGS.

  • Testing , by a restricted audience, often referred to as beta. Once we get close to a real product or service, we will move the application to the beta server: http://beta.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS-Proxy/NGSPrototypes/beta-trails.jsp and make it available to an outside test audience. The user group includes people outside of NGS to assist in the testing of the application and verification of its functionality.

  • Production , when a product or service becomes publicly available. The application will be moved off of prototype site and onto NGS public server: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/. All subsequent changes will then go through a standard software change process.

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    Web site owner: National Geodetic Survey (NGS),
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    Date Last Updated:March 1, 2010