Clarification on arches v. arches-for-science

[PaulJWright]

Not a code issue per se, but more a documentation one.

Is there an equivalent of http://arches.readthedocs.io for arches for science? I am part of a team that is considering Arches for a project, and I am interested in understanding the primary differences between arches, and arches-for-science.

Thanks

[chiatt]

Hi @PaulJWright -

I don't believe there is any equivalent documentation for Arches for Science although @annabelleee or @ekansa may be aware of information that could be helpful for you.

In regards to the distinction between Arches and Arches for Science, Arches for Science is essentially an application that runs on top of the Arches platform. When Arches for Science is installed, Arches will be installed as a dependency. If your familiar with Django, Arches is basically a Django project and Arches for Science is an app that extends that project.

[PaulJWright]

Hi @PaulJWright -

I don't believe there is any equivalent documentation for Arches for Science although @annabelleee or @ekansa may be aware of information that could be helpful for you.

In regards to the distinction between Arches and Arches for Science, Arches for Science is essentially an application that runs on top of the Arches platform. When Arches for Science is installed, Arches will be installed as a dependency. If your familiar with Django, Arches is basically a Django project and Arches for Science is an app that extends that project.

Thank you, I really appreciate your patience here! Is there anything outlining what AfS brings in addition to the base arches? I am not familiar with Django so will look further into that!

Cheers!

[ekansa]

@PaulJWright Hello!

I'm following up on the intro via @chiatt .

I'm working as a consultant to the Getty Conservation Institute in support of Arches, and I've been working to help support groups getting started with Arches for Science (AfS).

The bad news is that we've only begun a few small steps toward drafting some initial documentation for AfS. The good news is that core Arches has much more extensive documentation. Except for a few (but important) features that are added to AfS, the core Arches documentation should be very helpful.

While core Arches is almost "schema free" (it has user interface tools for implementers to define their own data schemas), AfS includes an elaborate data schema and special purpose user-interface tools ("workflows") to support cultural heritage conservation science. Since we do need to create documentation for AfS, please let me know what you'd find most immediately helpful.

If you're familiar with Docker, you may find this useful to setup for a localhost test of AfS: https://github.com/opencontext/arches-via-docker/blob/local-afs-dev-2-x/README.md

It's a "work in progress" and it could use some cleanup, but I use it for testing and using AfS for small projects.

[PaulJWright]

@ekansa thanks for your detailed reply! This is definitely helpful.

I will have to think more about what documentation would be useful once I've gone through the arches (and Django) docs.

I'll have a look at that repo thank you!

I fully expect we will be building an AfS project, so I'm sure I'll have more questions and can contribute to these docs when I have a better understanding