I just tried a couple projects on the Pas Project demo page and neither came
up,  http://joan.oise.utoronto.ca/webapp/previewprojectlist.html

First I tried "Nature of Science" and ulimately got a "Can't Load Curnit"
error.  Looking in the JNLP I saw the offering was at,
  http://rails.dev.concord.org/sds/4/offering/35575/config/86456/1/view
and the curnit inside was,

http://www.encorewiki.org/download/attachments/2113/converted-wise.berkeley.edu-16683.jar
which gives a 404 from the Encore wiki.

Then I tried the top of the list, Meiosis and got the same error.  This time
with this offering,
  http://rails.dev.concord.org/sds/4/offering/35573/config/86455/1/view
which has this curnit,

http://www.telscenter.org/confluence/download/attachments/19315/converted-wise-dev.berkeley.edu-29913.jar
which gives a Bad Gateway error, I think because TELS's Confluence and JIRA
are down.

The above is more a Pas specific issue than a SAIL issue, but I'm writing to
SAIL-Dev because I think the SDS could use a link checking function.  I see
this happening in different ways.

One would be a periodic sweep through its DB to see what URLs are 404 or not
responding and generate a report.  Someone responsible for a set of curnits
could look and see what needs attention.  This might be easier if there were
an e-mail address associated with each offering (maybe there is already
through its ownership) that was notified when a dead link was found.  The
links checked could be both the curnits and the JAR resources.

The other idea I have is more complicated but I think also worthwhile.  On
request of the offering, the SDS can check the curnit URL (or look in its
records to see its status if it it's already been requested recently) and if
the curnit isn't available, then return a different offering that produces a
Java app that notifies the user of the problem and gives them information to
redress it.  This message could be customized by the author/owner of the
offering.

Hitting bad links is a problem, and currently there is no way for the lay
user to understand what happened and even worse, no way to get in touch with
the people who can fix it.

-Turadg

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