OpenACS by context

"..the human mind can only deal with a relatively small number of independent pieces of data at one time, but if data are chunked together in appropriate ways, the mind can perform higher order abstractions, and these in turn can be chunked together, with successive abstractions, until an entire complex situation is encompassed. The systems approach addresses this property of the human mind by providing strategies for the data gathering, chunking, and abstracting process." George G. Lendaris, On Systemness and the Problem Solver: Tutorial comments 1983.

The following table uses a systems strategy of multiple perspectives to help identify subsystems and how OpenACS works. Areas are linked for further information.

Table showing observational perspectives (subsystems) versus roles of OpenACS, a n-tier architecture web application framework

OpenACS by context, showing subsystems versus roles
subsystems roles
Community, organizational (external) Guest Registered user Moderator (special) Package admin Sitewide admin
User interface web-based interface        
OpenACS      
embeded, programming language interpretor n/a      
relational database(s) n/a        
database procedural language (PL/SQL, PL/PgSQL) n/a      
high-performance web server n/a      
operating system (file system, shell etc) n/a
  • file naming conventions
  • file naming conventions
  • file pathnames and hierarchy ('man hier' from a linux shell)

following are not required for all systems
gcc compiler
(for installing AOLserver, Tcl, PostgreSQL from source code)		 n/a n/a n/a n/a
  • specific to OS distribution

n/a = not applicable

Revision History

View source of this page to see working/draft notes

Document Revision # Action Taken, Notes When? By Whom?
0.3 Adding some table contents 26 May 2005 Torben Brosten
0.4 Adding some table contents, clarified doc 20 August 2005 Torben Brosten