2023-07-31 - Platform & Application Formalization

Craig McNally will take notes

Vince

Background:

• A presentation of this information has been given at a summit meeting in June 2023 at University of Chicago.
  • See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1Pknn84cNd8esuv2BCzYXZunnZ66jNb9gQOhvSiQ78/edit?usp=sharing
• The purpose of this discussion is to share with a wider audience, specifically the Technical Council.
• This is the first of a series sessions.  Additional dedicated discussions will likely be required to get through all of the information.  
• There are several WOLFcon sessions planned which will touch on these topics.  
• Today's presentation is a continuation of 2023-07-17 - Application Formalization
• Link to slide deck:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/146lQx8CjFzAAacKnvhiiJPt6LIUd3aAIxSmQ1Q6xtHc/edit?usp=sharing

Notes:

• A recap/summary of the previous session was provided.  No new questions
• Questions raised at the last session were reviewed and discussed
  • It was acknowledged that we may need a transition period where we start with larger applications, and once we break apart the dependencies, refine these large applications into smaller, more ideal applications
  • Reiterated that applications are versioned.  If a module gets a version bump, so does it's application
  • The goal here is to bring the TC up to speed on technical topics discussed at University of Chicago a month or two ago.  WOLFcon will be a good opportunity for others to weigh in on both technical and non-technical aspects of these things.
    • The non-technical aspects do need to be considered when formulating technical designs
    • The introduction of applications requires a shift in how the project thinks about releases and related processes
• An overview/introduction of the formalization of "platforms" was given
• The "Platform" is the stack, e.g. Folio Core + Folio LSP + Folio LSP Extended = platform
• We need to be careful about expanding the scope of this proposal, e.g. what goes into the extended tier?  
• The idea is that this will help simplify the release process.  Most of the modules being introduced lately are specialized, on the fringe, etc. 
• Extended Tier applications are confirmed to be compatible with a particular Platform/Platform version.
  
  • Bugfest tests Folio Core + Folio LSP 
  • Confirming compatibility falls upon the development teams providing the extended tier applications
    • How exactly does all of this work?  Probably deserves a dedicated discussion
• Note that an application may belong to multiple platforms, but a given module can only belong to a single application.
• More comments regarding the technical vs non-technical aspects of this discussion.

• "Platform" is misleading wording. It's true that it is currently used for https://github.com/folio-org/platform-complete and https://github.com/folio-org/platform-minimal, but only platform-minimal is actually a platform all others are based upon. Can "Platform" been renamed to "Product" or some other better word?

• "Application" is misleading wording and a rename has been requested multiple times. Can "Application" been renamed to "Bundle" or some other better word?
• I don't see the difference between an application descriptor and a platform discriptor. The example application descriptor includes a platform descriptor by reference suggesting that they are structually the same. Can you provide an example that shows how they are structurally different?
• https://github.com/folio-org/platform-complete and https://github.com/folio-org/platform-minimal already have fully automated dependency resolution and the *.json and other files in these repositories provide most of the information the proposed application descriptor and platform descriptor will provide. Why don't you use (and extend where needed) the existing solution?
• Why are Application-Centric UI Bundles included in the Platform & Application Formalization proposal? Can they been moved out of this proposal and discussed separately? Then UI-Module-Centric UI Bundles can be discussed that can be implemented independently of the Platform & Application Formalization. Why are Application-Centric UI Bundles better than UI-Module-Centric UI Bundles?
  
• Why has the Shared-Database-Pattern proposal being included into the Platform & Application Formalization proposal? Please remove the Shared-Database-Pattern proposal and discuss it separately. Each of the two proposals can be done without the other. The Shared-Database-Pattern should not generally been allowed within any Application, only in very few cases after a detailed investigation of the pros and cons involving all developers, technical leads and architects. See also https://relevant.software/blog/microservices-database-management/