Abstract Compendium of Models, Environments and Tools (A-COMET)

Abstract Compendium of Models, Environments and Tools (A-COMET) is a web-based application developed for The Aerospace Corporation. One of the major requirements of The Aerospace Corporation was to allow employees to find information about models, environments and tools on a single wiki-page. A-COMET interface was designed to allow users to retrieve information conveniently.

A-COMET was designed using the Model View Controller (MVC) technique. Django was selected to be the framework of A-COMET. The MVC design pattern allows straight-forward development of A-COMET by separating what the user sees, the request of the user and the type of data being worked with. Django allows the creation of separate applications and easily combine them.

Django framework allows A-COMET to access data in the database and control it in order to create pages which only show relevant information. When a user requests information regarding a tool, A-COMET will present the user with an AEROpedia page. The AEROpedia page will be embedded with an info box containing information from the database. A user can also browse through the database by clicking navigational links in dataset table.

The Aerospace Corporation wanted to keep AEROpedia independent from A-COMET. This limitation led to the design decision of integrating A-COMET with a proxy in order to get the information from AEROpedia. A-COMET’s integrated proxy is integrated with page parsing and modification mechanisms.

The field values in the table of the database browser are links that are used to redirect the user to more information about that particular topic. By default certain fields of the table are hidden from the user. However, the user can specify the fields they want to be displayed. For example the "tool_id" field is initially hidden from the user.

Each data page includes a dynamic text search box. User may sort the dataset on any column. A drop down menu allows the user to specify number of data rows per page.

An advanced user can run a custom query through the database, but cannot delete or edit the information in the database. The user has the option to save the query they will send to the database.

A-COMET comes with an interface for administrators to help them manage the database. The interface allows administrators to create and delete users and manage their permissions. Administrators can also view, add and edit information on the database. A-COMET also keeps a log of recent changes each administrator has done to the database.

The largest challenge in the development of A-COMET was designing a system that was dependent on other systems that we did not have access to. This challenge led to misconceptions about information retrieval and an unstable database schema. Another challenge was working with an unfamiliar framework, which resulted to overall slower development of A-COMET.

Student Team
  • Mayank Aggarwal
  • Yuze Hao
  • Miguelangel Nunez
  • Loc Truong
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