What this page is NOT!
This page has been set up by Nicholas Karimi, ArchNav mentee to document his experiences and understanding of the project as he interacts with it. Therefore, consider this not as documentation for the ArchNav tool but a knowledge-sharing repository.
Problem Statement
In an environment where we had an ideal Wiki and an ideal ReadTheDocs, a small team would be effective in maintaining an up to date documentation, while developers and end-users who want to look up information on documentation would do it effortlessly.
Currently, the Wiki is not structured. There are two sources for ONAP information, the developer wiki, and the ReadTheDocs. This is a problem because some of the documentation on the wiki is not quickly moved to the ReadThe Docs where essentially it is supposed to reside and gets outdated pretty quick.
This makes it very difficult to find information and find the most current and relevant one. With so much information scattered in the wiki, minimizes value to the users and they will tend to forgo looking up for documentation they were after.
The Architecture Navigator seeks to solve this problem by creating a visual presentation layer with clickable objects representing each individual project under ONAP. The tool aims to offer an interactive interface where users would need to hover over different objects mapping links to the project documentation.
Use Case
The specific use case being addressed by this evaluation is that of providing a method for image-based navigation to the correct formal doc set for developers, implementers, operators, and end-users of ONAP.
What is Architecture Navigator?
Architecture Navigator is a web-based tool that provides common access to the wiki and the Read The Docs documentation. It uses existing project diagrams and overlays the diagrams with clickable are maps. A clickable area object within the diagram is a visual representation of the individual ONAP projects which have hyperlinks embedded on them such that, when a user hovers a mouse over the object and clicks, they are redirected to the project documentation or the wiki.
The Architecture Navigator does not create documentation but allows users to easily navigate through documentation that resides in the Read The Docs.
ArchNav as a Framework
ArchNav is an architectural platform that provides common access to the wiki and RTD. It uses existing ONAP projects diagrams and overlays them with clickable area maps. Its usefulness has been demonstrated beyond ONAP documentation needs thus the tool can be repurposed and used for any other project in LFN.
ArchNav has no static HTML pages per se, all the HTML pages are dynamically created in real-time based on the user request. It uses a file system DB to store JSON objects which on a single modification, can entirely point to a different project.
Current Version
| Project | Architecture Navigator |
|---|---|
| Release Name | dn |
| Release Version | 3.0 |
Technical Details
- ArchNav does not have any static HTML pages. All HTML pages are dynamically created in real-time based on the "Path" component in the URL request.
The path drives menu creation.
- ArchNav uses a filesystem DB to store all JSON objects.
- Area maps are defined using a common JSON object.
- Developed using PHP, JSON, CSS, JS
- Apache Webserver
Design Overview
As mentioned in the technical details, ArchNav HTML pages are dynamically created. A JSON object is defined in the notion of topics and sub-topics.
Topic
A topic is defined as a major project such as 5g-blueprint, o-ran e.tc
Sub-topic
Subtopics are components that are necessary to the Topic.
Other Information:
- link to current source code: https://github.com/ca2853/onapdocs/tree/dev
How does ArchNav Work?
- ToDo
Side by side comparison between ArchNav and Read The Docs
This side by side comparison targets the following areas:
- Functionality
- Maintenance
- Infrastructure requirement
| ArchNav | Read The Docs | |
|---|---|---|
| FEATURES | Supported(Y/N) | Supported(Y/N) |
| Web-based | Y | Y |
| Software Model | standalone server | SaaS |
| page creation | dynamic | static |
| browser compatibility | Works best on Mozilla Firefox | -browser-independent |
FUNCTIONALITIES
| Architecture Navigator | Read The Docs |
|---|---|
Technologies used include:
| Technologies used;
|
| Works on the browser | Works on the browser |
| Does not create documentation | Creates documentation |
| Offers interactive overlay | Links embedded in the image. |
| Content is dynamically loaded as the user navigates to new pages. | Content not dynamically created |
| Offers quick access to documentation in a click. | Documentation is scattered and does not offer a straightforward way of looking up information. |
References links to both formal and development wiki | Holds complete and formal technical documentation. |
| Clickable maps in the form of image overlay. | Clickable maps in the form of an SVG diagram. |
| Dynamic code generation | N/A |
| Allow toggling on and off for some features on demand | N/A |
| Image creation from any source (bitmap image) | Requires image editing/modification |
INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS
| ArchNav | Read The Docs | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating System | Linux | SaaS |
| Web-server | Apache | |
| vCPU Cores | 2 | |
| Memory | 8 Gb | |
| Storage | 1 Gb |
MAINTENANCE
| ArchNav | Read The Docs |
|---|---|
| Requires brief end-user training on how to use the tool | Straight forward |
| Will require a team of technical code contributors/committers | Requires knowledge of rst syntax and Inkscape. |
| Require manual update of the links to point to the current documentation | TBD - confirm whether automatic sync with git |
| Has multiple moving parts | Fewer moving parts |
| New features coded by the ONAP community | New features coded by RTD community |
| Initial setup of new infrastructure and ongoing support | SaaS |
FINDINGS
ArchNav is a highly versatile platform that supports a wide variety of use cases. One of the drivers for its creation seems to be in part as a workaround to existing documentation policies that are not being followed, (see DeveloperWiki and ReadTheDocs Usage Policy) The confusion created by not following the set documentation policy in all situations, in addition to the wiki being poorly structured, has created the need for something like ArchNav to help the development community find the information they need. However ArchNav brings complexity when designing a clickable image, The process requires taking a snapshot of an existing image, converting it to a PNG file (if not already a PNG), using an external tool to draw shapes around objects in the image to generate the needed coordinates and lastly to store the coordinate attributes in a JSON object. This has the potential to be more time-consuming and error-prone when compared to creating OVERLAYS using an SVG editor to create diagrams with embedded links. SVGs with embedded links however have less versatility than ArchNav has demonstrated.
As a platform ArchNav is not a resource or storage hog since most of its files are generated dynamically on demand using PHP and Javascript and none of the items linked from an image reside locally.
Documentation residing in the read the docs is always up to date and the most current. The ArchNav will require a separate manual update of the links pointing to the documentation in addition to the current RTD updates whenever there is a new release of ONAP.
- >capture need for infra' maintenance → budget ramification beyond this eval,
RECOMMENDATION
- Implement a FACADE design pattern
As is, the tool can be supported by people with the right technical skillset, however, to broaden the scope and make it accomodating for contribution from technical and non-technical members of the community, a simple web page with input forms as an interface that is mapped to the JSON object instances. In essence, this will eliminate the need for directly modifying the backend code to make changes.
- Implement webhooks on GitHub with the wiki configuration.
To address the concerns for maintaining an up-to-date documentation reference, exploring and experimenting with some automation methods would be ideal. In this case, webhooks can be configured on github to be triggered to make an update to the flat file storage such as when there is a new release or a release tag changes.