RFC 1 - Proposal for a Solutions Database

General RFC
1

This RFC proposes a solution for the TANGO Controls community to facilitate finding and sharing device servers by creating a database of solutions which can be searched and which links to the source code and developers. Such a solutions database can be used to store information of other types of solutions like training material, system designs, applications etc.

Examples of existing solutions databases which could serve as models for the TANGO Controls Solutions Database are the Eclipse Marketplace and the Jetbrains Plugin Repository.

Requirements

The solutions must be stored with their metadata in a database which is searchable via the website for any of the metadata tags. The database must support different categories. The following categories must be supported in the first edition:

  • Device Servers
  • Applications
  • Training

The Device Servers category must contain the following metadata:

  1. Name
  2. Description
  3. Programming Language
  4. Platform(s)
  5. Author
  6. Maintainer
  7. Affiliation
  8. Date created
  9. Date of last change
  10. Interface description (xmi)
  11. Link to Code Repository
  12. Used by
  13. Download link
  14. Downloads
  15. Comments
  16. Likes

The Applications category must have the following metadata:

  1. Name
  2. Description
  3. Programming Language
  4. Platform(s)
  5. Author
  6. Maintainer
  7. Affiliation
  8. Date created
  9. Date of last change
  10. Link to Code Repository
  11. Used by
  12. Download link
  13. Downloads
  14. Comments
  15. Likes

The Training category must have the following metadata:

  1. Name
  2. Description
  3. Programming Language
  4. Author
  5. Maintainer
  6. Affiliation
  7. Date created
  8. Date of last change
  9. Download link
  10. Downloads
  11. Comments
  12. Likes

Home Page
The Solutions Database home page must have the following features:

  • Integrated into the TANGO Controls website
  • A list of categories and the number of solutions
  • A summary of the latest entries with link to the entries
  • A list of the most popular downloads
  • A search interface for searching on metadata per category
  • An upload feature for adding entries to the database either manually or by uploading a file with a list of entries
  • An attractive pleasing to the eye layout
2

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the document, it’s well structured and summarizes what I think we need for attracting new people to Tango. Maybe “Tango Market” or “Tango Gifts” sounds better than “Solutions Database” but at the end the contents is what will really matters.

Let’s try to push up the topic again to see if we can get more comments.

Sergi

3

Just for the name :

Tango Market → makes me think about Eclipse marketplace
Tango Store → make me think I’m gonna need to pay some € (AppStore, PlayStore…)

For the RFC :
It will be very usefulf for sharing easily all the sateelites tango applications too like Panic, Canone, etc…
And since everybody have to deal with this “concept of centralized place”, we need to do it to (from my point of view)