-
-
-Group Admin Pages - Design
ACS subsite docs : Group Admin Pages - Design
-I. Essentials
+Group Admin Pages - Design
+ACS subsite docs
+ : Group Admin Pages - Design
+I. Essentials
+II. Introduction
-The group administration packages provides a "control panel" to
-allow the administrator of a subsite to control the groups in use
-on that subsite. Administrators manage the types of groups in use
-on a subsite. For each of these group types, the administrator can
-create new groups, specify applicable relationship types, create
-relations between these groups, and modify attributes of the types
-and groups.
+
+II. Introduction
+
+The group administration packages provides a "control
+panel" to allow the administrator of a subsite to control the
+groups in use on that subsite. Administrators manage the types of
+groups in use on a subsite. For each of these group types, the
+administrator can create new groups, specify applicable
+relationship types, create relations between these groups, and
+modify attributes of the types and groups.
III. Historical Considerations
+
Versions 4.0.x of the ACS lacked a useful group administration
package for subsites. For example:
- Groups were given no context
- Groups could not be deleted
- Group types could not be created
- Relationships were limited to membership and composition, not
including subtypes of these two.
+
This package addresses most of the short-coming of the previous
subsites group administration package making group administration
subsite aware and better integrated with the ACS Object Model.
IV. Design Tradeoffs
+
Whenever possible, the design of this package tries to minimize
disturbance to the core ACS 4.0 data model. Instead, we focus on
adding a more powerful user interface and PL/SQL API to the
existing group admin pages while extending the data model only when
necessary.
-V. API
Permissible relationship types
+V. API
+Permissible relationship types
+
We defined the following two tables to store the relationship type
used to store the permissible relationship types for group types
and individual groups. Whenever a group is created using the
-acs_group.new function, the relationship types for the
+acs_group.new
+ function, the relationship types for the
new group are automatically copied from those allowed for its group
type.
@@ -70,40 +79,56 @@
constraint group_rels_group_rel_type_un unique (group_id, rel_type)
);
-Dynamic subtypes of object types
+
+Dynamic subtypes of object types
+
To allow administrators to create dynamic object types (e.g.
-subtypes of the object types group,
-membership_rel, and composition_rel), we
+subtypes of the object types group
+,
+membership_rel
+, and composition_rel
+), we
provide a Tcl library of procedure that generate PL/SQL packages.
For each dynamically created object type, we:
- We create the ACS object type
- We create a table to store the attributes for the new type
- We create a PL/SQL package with a new function and delete
procedure
+
Whenever an attribute is added or deleted, a type added or removed,
we regenerate some of the PL/SQL packages, based on the type
hierarchy affected by the change.
Attributes themselves are stored using
type-specific storage. For each new attribute, we
create a column in the table dynamically created for the new object
-type.
To support the clean separation between programmer defined
+type.
+To support the clean separation between programmer defined
PL/SQL packages and automatically generated packages, we add the
dynamic_p column to the acs_object_types
-table.
+table.
+
acs_object_types.dynamic_p char(1) default 'f'
constraint acs_obj_types_dynamic_p_ck
check (dynamic_p in ('t', 'f'))
-Note that the dynamic_p is still experimental
-and may be removed in a future version of ACS
VII. Data Model Discussion
+
+Note that the dynamic_p is still
+experimental and may be removed in a future version of
+ACS
+VII. Data Model Discussion
+
...
VIII. User Interface
+
The user interface comprises entirely of administrative pages
-located in the /admin/ directory of the subsite
+located in the /admin/
+ directory of the subsite
package.
IX. Configuration/Parameters
+
The revised group administration pages require no new package
parameters.
X. Future Improvements/Areas of Likely Change
+
There are many areas for improvement to the user interface,
including tighter integration with the relational segments and
constraints packages. One major improvement would allow individual
@@ -112,28 +137,36 @@
are not themselves objects, it is difficult to properly scope
object types.
We also may add a few additional package parameters
-including:
-- "Create Group Types" (Boolean). Determines whether new group
-types can be created dynamically.
- "Create Relationship Types" (Boolean). Determines whether new
-relationship types can be created dynamically.
-
XI. Authors
+including:
+
+- "Create Group Types" (Boolean). Determines whether
+new group types can be created dynamically.
- "Create Relationship Types" (Boolean). Determines
+whether new relationship types can be created dynamically.
+
+XI. Authors
+
This document is primarily the result of discussions between Oumi
Mehrotra and Michael Bryzek. Bryan Quinn and Rafi Schloming
provided key insights early in the development process.
XII. Revision History
+
+XII. Revision History
+
| Document Revision # | Action Taken, Notes | When? | By Whom? |
| 0.1 | Creation | 11/30/2000 | Michael Bryzek |
| 1.0 | Major Revision | 1/11/2001 | Michael Bryzek |
-
Michael
-Bryzek
group-admin-pages-design.html,v 1.1.4.1 2001/01/12
+
+
+Michael
+Bryzek
+
+group-admin-pages-design.html,v 1.1.4.1 2001/01/12
22:43:33 mbryzek Exp
-