Performance and stability problems
Over the last six months the records and species searches on the NBN Atlas have been running slowly and often failing to return results with a timeout error. The two searches (records and species) run off separate Solr indexes and in February we engaged a Solr Specialist company to perform an audit on our current Solr implementation and make recommendations on how to improve the performance and stability of the NBN Atlas searches.
The recommendations made relate to the design of the index (schema) and the size and number of the servers used to serve the index. With the help of the ALA (Atlas of Living Australia), Justin is investigating whether we can include the schema changes in the process that builds the index. We will keep you up to date with the progress via Network News and the NBN forum.
We will make changes to the size and number of the servers used to serve the index in May once our current AWS (Amazon Web Services) infrastructure can be restructured.
We apologise for these recent problems and would like to assure you that we are doing all we can to minimise any further issues. As always, thank you for your patience and support.
Contract developer for the NBN Atlas
We are delighted that Helen Manders Jones has joined us for an initial three months working as a contract developer. Helen has over 20 years experience working as a Java developer and will support Justin, our Systems Developer, in the on-going bug fixing, support and maintenance of the NBN Atlas.
Senior Java Developer
We are still looking for a Senior Java Developer to replace Reuben Roberts and we would be very grateful if you could help advertise the role for us, wherever possible. The vacancy has been updated since previously advertised.
Data processing Schedule
The NBN Atlas data processing schedule has been updated to the end of 2021 and can be found on the NBN Atlas.