Feedback Course 6 - Infrastructure

[lhjohn]

Original feedback: Infrastructure Feedback.zip

Course content (target audience and material):

• Schemas were missing without explanation how to create them. Provide SQL to create such schemas and grant proper minimal privilege-level. How much freedom does one have in naming schemas (what modifications are required in which places) and are there naming conventions?
• Mention that showing file extensions in Windows should be enabled
• Demonstrate how to modify MIME types to allow the IIS server to recognise .less files
• Demonstrate in more detail how rights/permission/security is configured.

[anthonysena]

@lhjohn apologies for the delay here - let me address each piece of feedback here so we can decide how to modify the course:

1a. Schemas were missing without explanation how to create them.

This refers to the CDM schema and results schema. Creating schemas is a well-understood topic in the DB management world and I feel like this should be prerequisite knowledge. Perhaps having a reference to something like https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/postgresql-create-schema/ would be helpful to address this feedback?

1b. Provide SQL to create such schemas and grant proper minimal privilege-level.

The SQL to create such schemas is going to depend on the target CDM database platform. That said, https://github.com/OHDSI/WebAPI/wiki/PostgreSQL-Installation-Guide covers this in deetail for PG. In terms of providing a SQL account with read-only access to a schema, again I'd say this is prerequisite knowledge. Perhaps a link to something like: https://tableplus.com/blog/2018/04/postgresql-how-to-create-read-only-user.html would work?

1c. How much freedom does one have in naming schemas (what modifications are required in which places) and are there naming conventions?

WebAPI's configuration is flexible and supports really any naming convention as described on the wiki: https://github.com/OHDSI/WebAPI/wiki/CDM-Configuration. There are some practical limits around this since schema names have a character limit along with the character limit provided in the WebAPI DB (255 characters)

Mention that showing file extensions in Windows should be enabled

Agreed - here is a nice step-by-step that we could add: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/show-file-extensions-in-windows. I forget sometimes that not everyone uses Windows :-)

Demonstrate how to modify MIME types to allow the IIS server to recognise .less files

Agreed - this was understandably frustrating for course attendees. Here are some steps:
https://www.firehousesoftware.com/webhelp/FHWeb/Content/FHWebInstallGuide/16_SetMimeTypesIIS7_0.htm. The values for the dialog below are ".less" and "text/css"

Demonstrate in more detail how rights/permission/security is configured.

I'm unclear what is meant by this - presumably this is related to DB rights to the CDM. If so, I'd suggest people understand that there is a prerequsite that they understand how rights/permissions/security is handled for their DBMS. We're not doing anything unique here but perhaps it is still very unclear of the permissions?

@lhjohn if you have any further details to share on the rights/permission feedback in particular, I'd appreciate it. I want to make sure that the details are clear for people but also don't want to re-create content for well-understood DB practices.

[lhjohn]

I have just summarised the given feedback a bit, so I am not quite sure that was meant by rights/permissions/security. I think your approach with not going into detail about all database aspects is fine. Maybe we just mention more clearly in the course prerequisites that a good understanding of database management is required.

Maybe it makes sense to add a FAQ in the course resources or as a pinned post in the forum.

I would actually add the MIME type explanation in a short 1 minute video, which I can edit in. I think on this there was by far the most feedback.

[lhjohn]

@anthonysena Have you decided, which modifications you would like to make for the course? Can you implement them in the staging environment?