Report for December 2016
- Report Date
- December 2016
Achievements this period
The main activity completed in this period was enabling a multi-lingual interface so foreign language translations can be presented. See the screengrabs below profiling these features. International collaborators in France, Spain and Germany have translated DMPonline, and their language files have been loaded into the tool. Users can change their language via the homepage and set language preferences on their profile. The foreign language options have also been tested with international users and associated bugs fixed.
We have also engaged a contractor to extend Single Sign-On support so this works with various international federations. Currently we only support SSO for UK Shibboleth users. The contractor has setup a test IdP with a few representative user accounts. The workflow for SSO will be revised to take in the best elements of the existing UK and US models and make this more intuitive to end users. Requirements for this are currently being discussed and we anticipate work being completed by late Spring 2017.
Following up on the initial requirements gathering conducted at the 2016 IDCC conference, we will be holding another workshop at IDCC17. The workshop is being done on a cost-sharing model with the DMPTool team, with whom we entered into a partnership last summer. The workshop will build on the API work, exploring use cases for machine-actionable DMPs and details about what data should be exchanged between DMP tools and other institutional systems.
Issues
One of our main international users is the DMPTuuli pilot in Finland. They have achieved adoption by the Academy of Finland and the tool was recommended for use in the main Autumn call for applications for research grants. In the weeks preceding the deadline, we saw 130-160 new users signing up each day. On three occasions, the volume of simultaneous usage caused the tool to grind to a halt. Load times were so slow (up to 4 minutes in some cases) that the system became unworkable. A temporary fix was put in place to support users during the call period (some minor code changes to reduce database page loads, increasing memory and CPUs), but a more major reworking is needed to ensure future performance and scalability.
There are fundamental issues in terms database structure and code, which prevents the tool from scaling. In November-December, we redesigned the database schema to only include natural entities. Migrations have been written and tested to transfer existing data to the new schema. The code is also currently being refactored to reduce the number of queries (we’re aiming for a single database query per page load in future) and to isolate data access from the views. This work should be completed by Spring 2017.
Targets next period
- Migration to the new database
- Complete refactoring to improve performance and scalability
- Workshop at IDCC conference
- Single Sign-On enabled for multiple federations
- Having internationalisation in regular use
Costs
Budget | Breakdown | Spend to date | Predicted 16/17 spend | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
£30,000 |
Total salaries |
£23,701 |
£20,000 | |
Travel | £124 | |||
Other direct costs | £540 | |||
Overheads | £281 | |||
IDCC 2017 workshop | £1,250 | |||
Total spent to date (2015-17) | £25,896 | Balance to be confirmed by Finance Office. |
RAG Status
GREEN. A significant piece of new work has been added but is well planned, under control and achievable within the remaining budget.
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