Eating Your Own Dog Food

Transcript

1. EATING YOUR OWN DOG FOOD Building a repository with API-driven

   development

2. HTTP://LNCN.EU/FMR9 It’s in a repository and everything!

3. NICK JACKSON Lead Web Developer @jacksonj04

4. JOSS WINN Senior Lecturer @josswinn

5. DO WHAT? • New RDM Platform • Focus on data

   during research, not after.

6. YE OLDE REPOSITORY • Built on the premise of deposition

   of files (or pointers). • Generally limited interface methods, eg browser or nothing. • Focuses on format (if filetype), not form (ie structure).

7. OUR APPROACH

8. LOVE YOUR BACKEND (LOL) • Be prepared to deal with

   raw data. • Build your APIs first. Not your UI, your APIs. • Build good APIs which people will want to use.

9. EAT YOUR OWN DOG FOOD • Use your own APIs

   to build the frontend. • Use your own documentation. • Find a user, and make them use things.
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13. FORGET THE CONTAINERS • Storing a CSV file is great,

    if you want a whole CSV file. • Research happens on subsets of data. • Give researchers a shared, easily usable database. • Use the APIs to put stuff in and out automatically.

14. MAKE IT EXTENSIBLE • Make sure data is accessible and

    writable easily. • Encourage re-usable modularity. • Rely on things that do things to get things done.

15. WHY?

16. WE BUILD BETTER STUFF • APIs are robust and reliable.

    • APIs are easily implementable by 3rd parties. • All functionality is available over APIs. • Error handling is consistent and clear. • Security is forcibly implemented across the board.

17. IMPROVED VISIBILITY • Database querying lets researchers find what they

    want. • Improved quantitative information on how much stuff. • Data can be seamlessly integrated with other systems.

18. SCALE TO INFINITY (And Beyond!) • Designed to scale horizontally.

    • No horrible statefulness to maintain. • Loose coupling means no un-picking necessary. Just go.
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20. THE PROBLEMS • Takes time to design decent architecture first,

    so less ‘jump in’. • Doubling up development at API and interface ends. • APIs can add overhead, especially ‘heavy’ types like XML-RPC.

21. FIN.