Integration

The following represents an overview of the architecture for the integration of this tool into MONTRA Framework. Some of the components of MONTRA Framework and SCALEUS-FD were omitted since these would not increase the value of this description. The code for MONTRA Framework is publicly available here, and the code for the SCALEUS-FD is publicly available here

MONTRA supports third-party components and allows users, with adequate permissions, to extend its functionalities without having to deal with its base code. To accomplish this strategy, a microkernel architecture was developed, providing the platform’s core to which several components can be dynamically added, enriching the overall system’s functionality.

These plugins can be further divided into two types: third-party plugins and fully-fledged plugins. Third-party plugins are full web applications that are linked to the system, through the navigation menu. They usually provide a completely different functionality. The main goal of these plugins is to integrate their application features in MONTRA’s environment. Fully-fledged plugins are internal extensions and they provide additional data services within the system. This type of plugin allows the development of decoupled services that can be easily attached to the main core module.

To allow its integration in the same web interface, each plugin is supported by a re-rendering method (Figure below). After its initial representation, in the browser, each time an event occurs the plugin updates its content using self.html() or self.append(). When this is done, self.refresh() has to be executed to update the visualization.