Specify 7 WorkBench
Bulk data uploading system for collection management software
Developed in
WorkBench is a bulk data uploading system for collection management software, Specify 7.
I worked on the front end, including the following features:
Support for spreadsheets of up to 500,000 rows
Built-in coordinate converter
Live and static data validation
Efficient cell search and navigation
Keyboard navigation and screen reader support
Integration with GEOLocate to help batch identify locality data
Automatic mapping of spreadsheet columns to database fields with respect to
o-one and -to-many data model relationships.
Screenshots
Video review
Specify WorkBench demo for SpeciForum 2021
Online demo
You can try out the live version at sp7demofish.specifycloud.org. The username and password are sp7demofish. When prompted to select a collection, choose any option. See usage instructions in the video above.
Technologies used
JavaScript
TypeScript
React
Docker
Leaflet (library for interactive maps)
Overview of the mapping capabilities
Overview of the mapping capabilities (in Russian)
Things learned
During the development of the WorkBench, most of the testing was done with data sets that were convenient for developers - 20-50 rows with 10-20 columns. It's only in the last few months before release that testing with a real world sizes data sets had begun. This quickly showed us that the tool had obvious performance issues and required us to scramble to fix it and to delay the release.
The lesson I learned from this is that testing should be done through the development process to make sure the tool is on track to meet the goals, and the testing performed should resemble real world use cases.