Fileman Application Cases - iks-gmbh-tools/Fileman GitHub Wiki

Example 1: Technical property files

Adlyn is the system administrator of an IT department. She is responsible for a whole landscape of computer systems which depend on each other. To keep this environment running, many system configuration settings (used in several places, e.g. the URL of a particular service in a specific environment) must match. To avoid Copy-And-Paste, she uses a file hosting system that is generally accessible in the intranet. This file hosting system provides a defined config file which is fetched by all the dependent systems. Adlyn uses this file as the single point of truth to administer the whole system landscape. The config file is well protected from unintentional modification and finely version controlled.

Example 2: Script file with business logic

Devri is a software developer and consultant. He has to frequently answer one of the following questions: "How much effort is needed to implement this?", "Do we need a deployment for that?" or "Does the application have a config switch for this?". To avoid those questions, he plans to outsource business logic from the source code to configuration data. Those data can be represented by script files. The script files are hosted on a file managing system. Each script-based application fetches, at runtime, the necessary scripts in their current versions from the file manager and executes them. In this way, business logic becomes configuration data. See here for a concrete example. In domains where business rules change rapidly, many modifications do no more require a deployment. In large companies, where operation and development departments are neatly separated, such a mechanism is very helpful.

Example 3: Logos and other customer-dependent data

Dora is a domain expert for an online sales platform and a contact person for important customers (big sellers). Customers contact her for modifying their online presence on the platform. Logos and ad texts change frequently. Those customer data are stored in a file managing system. The file manager provides these data to the platform services that render the pages of the customer presence. Dora simply has to check the format of the new data files and to upload them to the file manager. Unfortunately for Dora, the customers cannot do this on their own. The file manager is only accessible from the intranet. She plans to suggest to change this.