Solution strategy

Warning

🚧 This section is still in active development and is subject to changes 🚧

This document describes what overall strategy we have decided on to solve our problem, as outlined in the Introduction section. Specifically, what main technologies and what architectural designs we will use. Any solution we decide must adhere to the Guiding principles and the constraints.

The main technologies we will use are:

For Seedcase itself, it will be developed using Python, for multiple reasons, including because it is open source and because it is one of the most commonly used languages within research and industry alike.
For the data, the formal database will be created and managed by PostgreSQL, since it is an established and open source software, while raw data will be stored as either CSV or JSON files as they are the most common forms of storing data as well as being plain text.
For general software development and managing computing environments, we will build Seedcase within Docker containers. Containers are a modern and powerful way of management software and environment dependencies. Docker is very popular and the program is open source.
For building the web and API layer, we will use Django for the framework since it is very popular and has a large amount of online resources. Django also implements RESTful API (representational state transfer), which is the de facto standard way for building APIs.

For our decisions to use these technologies, see Architecture decisions

In relation to our Quality Goals:

Secure and legally compliant:
- We will separate the data in the backend with its own Docker container to ensure greater security.
- We will use established security and authentication protocols as plugins to Seedcase, rather than build a custom solution.
Beginner-friendly interfaces:
- Incorporate components of Documentation Driven Development (followed by components of Test Driven Development) to ensure that what the user interacts with is the first thing we consider and document.