Features of Aristotle-MDR¶
100% Free open-source software¶
The entire suite of software that Aristotle-MDR is built upon is free open-source software. The majority of these requirements are managed through the Python Package Index, the rest are online resources, such as jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework and Font Awesome are hosted through online content delivery networks for improved speed.
Because of the open nature, low-requirements and no-cost of this framework a new registry can be setup on a Python shared hosting service like Python Anywhere in a matter of minutes - and includes everything you need to get a professional scalable metadata registry up and running.
The only restriction with running Aristotle-MDR is that if you are running a public facing site, you keep a link to the Aristotle GitHub page in the footer, but even this can can be waived with permission.
Easily extensible¶
One of the core features of the ISO/IEC 11179-3 information model is the ability to extend the models by subclassing from the included items. Aristotle-MDR captures the core of the ISO/IEC 11179 as faithfully as possible, but provides a rich API to quickly and easily add new items for management using the Object-Oriented approach of Python and Django.
You can read more about the content type API and template overrides in the extensions documentation.
Mobile-friendly interface¶
Every page of Aristotle-MDR has been built upon the Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework. This means that every page has a responsive, mobile first design and flawlessly scales from the largest desktop to the smallest phone. Along with this, the use of the Font Awesome icon toolkit means menus and pages have a consistent look and feel.
Real-time enterprise search¶
Integration of the Django-Haystack search API provides a rich search engine capability, so content can always be found. Content can be search on not just by text fields, but also by Registration Status, the owner workgroup and content type, with more advanced search options to come!
Although the default settings for Aristotle use the Whoosh search engine, Haystack provides backend hooks for a number enterprise ready search engines.
The default settings for Aristotle-MDR include a real-time search index manager that tracks changes as they are made, and updates visibilty and indexes immediately.
With appropriate tweaking the Haystack engine can scale from the smallest research facility to the largest government agency.
Secure, thoroughly tested permissions¶
Using a set of thoroughly tested custom permissions, content created within the Aristotle registry can be show or hidden from the public and registered users based on the well documented status workflow in part 6 of the ISO/IEC 11179 standard.
Strict version control of the code on GitHub, continuous testing of the code using Travis-CI and code coverage analysis using Coveralls.io ensures that access permissions are clearly defined, and as changes are made if issues with permissions they can be idenitified and rectified immediately.
Easy content creation¶
Aristotle-MDR includes an easy to use editing system, that uses the robust CKEditor WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor, that gives users instant feedback on changes to content. The in-built editor gives access to a rich-text editor, easy insertion of links to content and an image upload and linking facility.