Dashboard and Widgets [general requirement]

[vwfox]

Dashboard and Widgets

definitions

• The dashboard system consists of dashboards and widgets.

• The dashboard system is to be understood as part of the Daanse client, which enables individual dashboards to be displayed, managed and edited.

• A dashboard is a page that allows at least one widget to be displayed, managed and edited. It can also hold controls

• A widget is a container for dynamic content that visualises data from the store and can interact with the store.

• A store is a provider off data for widgets and can be controlled via actions.

• A store contains a Datasource which can be used to retrieve data from the data source by means of a request and request parameters.

• Controls are special widgets that enable user interaction. They can trigger store actions or change request parameters.

relations

erDiagram
    DASHBOARDSYSTEM ||--}o DASHBOARDS : has
    DASHBOARDS ||--}o WIDGETS : has
    DASHBOARDS ||--}o CONTROLS : has
    WIDGETS ||--|| STORE : has
    STORE ||--|| DATASOURCE : has
    STORE ||--}o REQUEST : has
    STORE ||--}o REQUEST_PARAMETERS : has
    CONTROLS o{--}o REQUEST_PARAMETERS : change

requirements

• Dashboard-System: #344
• Dashboard: #346
• Widgets: #366

User Roles

User

• can not edit or set paramaters or settings, can only view wigets and interact with controls

  Editor

• can edit and set paramaters or settings

[ssemenkoff]

First of all the idea of dashboards and dashboardSystem is clear to me and we can proceed according to the current requirements.

The part starting from widgets isn't thought through good enough, so I have a suggestions here. I have 2 ideas on implementation of widgets, stores and datasources.

The main question for me is how the widgets and controls are connected between each other. And how the data for connected items are retrieved.

My first idea is based on the schema attached above. For communications between controls we have event bus. Controls and widgets can create events. Controls and widgets have group ids that represents their connections. Each event is created with group ids and parameters. Widgets with the same group id will listen for event and modify its store according to them. Each widget has it's own store that is responsible for storing widgets settings and data-specific settings. Each store has its own datasource. All the datasources send requests through the proxy object that is responsible for caching and preventing multiple simultaneous identical requests.

Second one is based on the idea similar to what I created in the beginning. All the widgets, stores and controls are part of the group object. Group object has it's own datasource(may be multiple datasources of different types) and it's own store. This store is only storing data-specific settings. Widget specific settings is a part of a widget. Controls and widget can call methods of the store directly and react to store changes. Having single datasource for group eliminates possibilities of same request occurring multiple times. So in this case dashboard will contain groups and not directly widgets and controls.

[vwfox]

I like the idea of the event bus. However, I see the problem with the reduntant requests. However, I see the caching more in the data source.

Alternatively, a combination of both ideas would make sense:

If you soften the 1..1 restriction of data resources and stores and that of widgets and stores, you could both map the groups and avoid the duplicate requests. Widgets could share a store if they consume the same data (and thus automatically form a group). In turn, stores could also use different data sources to enable the data to be intersected.

The event bus could mediate between controls and stores.

[ssemenkoff]

I like that idea. So the main points are:

• Stores can provide data to multiple widgets
• Stores can utilise data from multiple datasources
• Stores should be able to use datasources of different formats(rest, xmla, etc.)
• Widgets can call actions directly on stores
• Controls can call actions on stores via EventBus
• Group is a multiple widgets connected to the same store

[vwfox]

check