DNA

This is a highly experimental project. The API is subject to extensive change. If you're intrigued, try it out or drop me a line.

DNA is being developed in Python. It may be extended to other languages in the future.

Introduction & Purpose

When data-rich applications reach a certain critical mass, a lot of the design effort is spent on propagating the data through the application. This is especially the case in graphical applications. For example, take a financial application. The core data is probably a list of transactions, containing amounts, dates, and other information. This data is summarized and displayed in a number of ways. For example, one widget may display all the transactions to/from a specific account.

If the data is changed in any way, all the widgets depending on it need to be updated. It can be difficult or time-consuming to create a straightforward data flow from all the dependencies. DNA is designed for just such a case.

Design Overview & Philosophy

The application's master data-set is stored in the DNA instance. Any number of RNA instances can be linked to the DNA instance. Each RNA instance constitutes a particular expression of the master data.

For example, if the master data is a list of people's names, ages, and favorite kind of pie, one RNA may display a pie chart of favorite pie types, one RNA may display a pie chart of ages, and the final RNA may simply display the number of people in the list.

In practice, the design will often be more complicated, as shown below:

Here the master data-set is broken into smaller chunks. Each chunk may have multiple expressions. It is also possible to combine DNA and RNA behavior into one object.

Possible Requirements

• DNA

  • Support linking to arbitrary number of RNA objects.
  • Do not provide an interface for editing the data.
  • Support a fully-customizable interface for RNA objects to specify exactly what kind of data changes to the master data should be propagated to them.

• RNA

  • Whenever possible, draw upon the master data-set instead of duplicating data.
  • Provide a consistent interface for editing the master data-set through the RNA object.

• General

  • DNA and RNA functionality ought to be able to co-exist in one object.

TODO

• Implement basic DNA chain structure and DNACrawler functionality
• Implement core DNA
• Implement DNA chain structure and DNACrawler unit tests
• Implement interactive visual of DNA chain structure and DNACrawler
• Design and implement DNA mechanism for classifying changes to data
  • Design and implement mechanism for registering RNA
• Implement RNA
• Implement RNA unit tests
• Implement interactive visual of RNA
• Test in several use cases
• Stabilize API
• Document

Inspiration

Inspiration from this project came from biology, Kivy's properties, and Blender's DNA and RNA. Note that, at present, the terms "DNA" and "RNA" have a much different meaning in this project than they do in Blender (and they aren't quite true to biology, either).