On the surface, everything looked promising: requests were pouring in from researchers to present their work in Islandora; a large grant-funded project was commencing with Islandora as its core presentation and storage layer; and new positions were being created to define policy and architect solutions for the preservation of, and access to digital objects.
But behind the scenes there were problems: graphs spiked as processes contended for over-consumed resources; nascent bugs reared their heads only to disappear into the shadows; we began to grow fearful of implementing changes to the monolithic architecture for worry of unanticipated consequences.
It was time to reflect and rebuild.
Follow University of Toronto Libraries’ journey from identifying pain points in our Islandora stack through the redesign process of decoupling and isolating component technologies and reimagining development workflows. We’ll examine the impact this had on project managers, developers, end users, and our future plans.
Outcomes:
– Strategies for profiling and debugging complex software stacks
– Methods for designing and testing new systems
– The advantages of microservice design over traditional web architecture
– The importance of proper development workflows
