Purpose

(see issue) A simple system single source of truth for project document metadata (title, document number, author name, possibly abstract) and location (link to where it is stored).

Users

Project members across multiple institutions.

Requirements

• for each document, the system stores and displays:
  • title
  • document identifier
  • doc_code (to allow for more descriptive identifier that can also be used to search by)
  • author name
  • compiled url
  • source url
  • abstract (optional)
• the author linked to a set of documents can edit the associated metadata (particularly important for keeping links up-to-date)
• has search functionality based on stored fields
• authentication - since no sensitive data will be stored, authentication is needed only to link authors to their documents and allow editing; Google auth ideal for minimum friction across collaboration

Software stack

For a quick test system:

• Flask back-end
• Vue.js front-end
• sqlite database - not expecting more than 100k visits / day, more than 281 Tb or the need for high concurrency ([sqlite limitations]{https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html})
• Google auth
• hosted on lavinia (https://lavinia.as.arizona.edu/)
• hosted on separate, encrypted server (caaodoc.as.arizona.edu)

Long-term

Long term, the system might need to be able to store some / all documents. To allow for this, some possible future directions are:

• scale existing system to strengthen security to allow for storing ITAR docs (would storage capacity on lavinia also be an issue?)
• port to a fork of the LIGO DCC (https://dcc.ligo.org/login/FAQ.html ; https://github.com/ericvaandering/DocDB)
• port to a different system (AWS has a documentation database service; does Google?)

To test:

1. Run the server-side Flask app in one terminal window (in the appropriate env, which here is called dis):

   $ cd server
   $ conda activate dis
   (env)$ conda install --file requirements.txt
   (env)$ flask run --port=5001 --debug

2. Run the client-side Vue app in a different terminal window:

   $ cd client
   $ npm install
   $ npm run dev