Application for GSoC Project - Package WebUI

[John (J5) Palmieri]

On Sat, 2008-03-29 at 22:44 +0800, Izhar Firdaus wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 9:01 PM, John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com> wrote
> >  > Or do J5 have different view about this?, both idea ( improve MyFedora
> >  > / improve PackageDB ) sounds okay to me, just that I feel that if
> >  > MyFedora implements those features, PackageDB and the effort made for
> >  > it previously would be rendered of no-use (or perhaps thats what one
> >  > of MyFedora's goal - to obsolete packagedb ) ..
> >
> >  There is a balance here.  For everything I have to pull from there is a
> >  cost in terms of calls I have to make to different backends per page
> >  along with the extra work to recreate the GUI for each module.  The
> >  different backends are taking a tools centric approach to manipulating
> >  data where as My Fedora takes a more data centric approach (here is the
> >  data how would I like to manipulate and display).  I agree the data side
> 
> In other words, instead of calling interfaces provided by these
> backends (which is, obviously, more costly) , MyFedora will be
> directly access the databases and manipulate the data to be in a more
> user-centric and useful views (am I right?).

I generally do not want to talk to a DB directly though if performance
becomes an issue I might have to.  Generally it goes 

MyFedora <-json-> mfquery proxy <-json/xmlrpc etc.-> Fedora Resource
<-db connection-> DB.

The proxy is there so I can call async via JavaScript so the only thing
one would gain from a direct DB connection is to get rid of the HTTP
connection to the fedora resource but then you lose any of the business
logic above and beyond the actual data.  For instance I just added
optional functionality to the 'list' call in bodhi to check every
release request in the list and flag if the logged in user is allowed to
modify the request.  I could have done that as a separate check in
MyFedora but it would take longer and I would have to replicate the
logic for determining if a user is allowed to modify.  If it changed in
bodhi MyFedora would be out of sync and the user would be presented with
inconstant UI.

> >  of it should be part of PackageDB but unless someone really wants to
> >  work on a separate PackageDB UI I would just have that be a simple dump
> >  of the database in a slightly nicer form.
> >
> >  In any case my thoughts on the subject are logged somewhere else in the
> >  thread where I talk about Apps vs. Packages and how a separate app would
> >  look different from a My Fedora app.  Read there.
> 
> I couldnt find the thread, is it in this list or another list?. iirc
> i've read it before. an App may have multiple Packages.

It is in the same thread:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-March/msg02528.html

Read to the end of that thread as there are more tidbits there.

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com>