The web visualization app has made leaps and bounds. it now displays points on screen from a PostgreSQL database using Iceland 2014 data. I had to integrate the front end and back end to prevent the need for multiple servers running; there were also issues with cross-domain requests. I also modified the data API to conform with the filter specifications we talked about in our last meeting.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been looking into lightweight frameworks for doing web development. I’ve been experimenting with Flask, which is amazingly simple.

I did some python/bash scripting to manipulate data left over from Iceland, and cleaned it up so it would all fit into one database schema. This should be updated later to comply with some kind of standard we all decide on.

I’m beginning to like the idea of developing our data interfacing software under an api-based model of programming. I think it is beneficial to decouple the database from the front end. I’m considering developing a restful api that returns data in a JSON format that can be interpreted and displayed on screen by some kind of JavaScript-based web app. This may also give us the flexibility to later integrate data into Android or desktop apps as well.

One of the big tasks yet to do is to figure out how to send the data between the client application and the database server. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to do that?