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IBIS-PH System Documentation - Welcome

Welcome to the IBIS-PH System Documentation. This page provides an overview of the system documentation for the three applications that comprise the IBIS-PH system (View, IBIS-Q, Data Admin). This documentation does NOT include end user documentation. It is intended to aid system administrators, content managers, application developers, and potential adopting agencies learn how to install, extend, and manage the IBIS applications. Please see the Reader Prerequisite Knowledge section below which describes the intended reader audience and the requisite knowledge needed for the content contained on this site.

Documentation Status:

Due to limited funding, the documentation presented on this site is not complete nor has it been proofed or edited. The View System documentation is relatively close for System Information, Installation, and Content Management other than the IBIS-Q related pages. The appendicies are mostly accurate but not 100% proofed or complete. The various reports listed have not been tested recently and most likely do not work. The IBIS-Q documentation is lacking in all areas other than the content management section and Appendix A - of which neither has been proofed. The Data Maint and Admin documentation is complete for System Information and Installation but has not been proofed. The IBIS-PH Admin Technical Reference is an MS-Word document and is quite old but the database data element definitions are still mostly correct and accurate in this document.
Most of the pages within this site will report a recent edit date of say June 2022. The pages within this site are HTML_CONTENT XML files and were moved into the html_content folder to match current version 3 content conventions.

Documentation Orgainization:

The documentation is organized into three sections which correspond to the three IBIS-PH web applications (see the Architecture page for a more detailed definition of each application and where it fits). Each application's section documentation is then broken down into a series of high level categories. Each category contains an introduction or overview type page that describes what type of pages and information that are contained within the category. The main categories that are consistent across all application documentation sections include: Other high level categories are typically referred to as an "Appendix". These appendices contain technical reference information. Examples are:

Audience and Reader Prerequisite Knowledge

The intended audience for this documentation includes directors, program managers, web content managers, system administrators, system developers, and project managers. This documentation does NOT include any end user documentation nor does it provide use cases or any of the Unified Process's documentation artifacts.

The System Overview type sections provide high level general information that is applicable to all types of users like project managers, system administrators, software developers, and content managers. The content management sections are geared toward the "super user" or "power user" who have specific knowledge about web content but does not have system developer or administration skills needed to deal with the core black box application code (Java, JSPs, Javascript, XSLTs, C, etc.). These content manager type users do have to know about XML and the type of content contained within those elements and what those elements do. Another type of content manager user is the backend SAS data expert. These users need to know how to deal with SAS, SAS Datasets, and SAS programming in general. They also will need to know how the IBISQ CGI application control files work and how to edit those files.

The balance of the documentation is geared toward seasoned Java web application system administrators, Java web developers, RDBMS DBAs, and to a certain degree web developers. The intent is to provide just enough information so that this type of reader can semi understand, install, deploy, and extend the system. If the reader does not have the perquisite Java application server, Java development, web (HTML, CSS, Javascript), XML, RDBMS/DBA skills experience/knowledge for that given topic then they will need to reference other sites/materials to learn about that technology before being able to understand the content presented on this site.
This documentation site uses the IBIS-PH View System's transformation engine, CSS, and XSLTs. Most documentation pages are presented as HTML pages (which are simply HTML_CONTEXT XML files transformed via the appropriate HTMLContent.xslt to produce the html page). As such most have the typical left hand menu navigation and the ability to be formatted as a printer friendly page etc. Other pages, like the Java API docs are true stand alone HTML pages (created independently) which means that these pages do NOT have the IBIS-PH Documentation System's navigation or look and feel. When viewing these pages, the reader will simply have to rely on their browser's back button etc. Finally, other parts of the system documentation are delivered as MS-Word documents, Visio diagrams etc. and will need these applications for viewing and likewise will not have navigation etc.