What is the Web?¶
Overview¶
The Web is a server for transforming data into visualizations. It can manipulate data from the Center or any other database to display in high speed & high volume tables, trees, charts, and heatmaps. The Web also allows for custom workflows, from custom forms to building & emailing PDFs.
The main file on the Web is the layout, which describes a set of visualizations and the necessary AmiScript for transforming data into that visualizations. A layout is structured by windows, tabs, and dividers. Inside of these structures we place panels such as tables, graphs, forms, and custom html. We use objects called datamodels to transform data from the format it lives in to the format needed for visualization.
The Web also manages user entitlement and authentication, interoperates with other applications, and enables workflows development.
Advanced¶
Session Management¶
The web server asks users to enter a username and password, which is then forwarded to a single sign on/entitlements server for authentication. Assuming the user is authenticated, they are granted access to existing dashboards. For users with dashboard-building privileges, they will also be enabled to edit and create new dashboards which they can then share with other users.
User Sessions¶
Each logged in user will be assigned a unique user session loaded with a dashboard, user-specific parameters and current state about what that user is seeing and permissioned to see and do. The dashboards contain a datamodel responsible for interacting with the Center as well as the visualizations that user sees.