tonight's big release

We are releasing the latest version of our application tonight. We have implemented a new security model that is very fine-grained and flexible. It will enable us to "turn on" new user types in a way that is (for the most part) purely data-driven.

From a release management standpoint, tonight's release is a behemoth. The new security model involves a multitude of code and database changes. In addition, there is a lot of data we are now summarizing, so old data must be backfilled appropriately. I have written a cool little data-backfill utility with a GUI front-end for starting and stopping the update threads as needed. It has several configurable parameters that allow the backfill program to rest at certain points (so the database can take a "breather").

It should be a very interesting night.