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By pitonyak on
I have minimal exposure to Drupal.
I was asked to look in to implementing Configuration Management on a Drupal installation that someone is standing up. My first thought was to look at existing modules that I can deploy and configure in Drupal. What I found is that (1) there are many modules so scrolling through all of them will be very tedious, and (2) when I search for Configuration Management all of the top hits are showing me the plug-in to deal with CM for the current site's configuration so that I can more easily migrate one instance to another.
In other words, I am not finding what I want and I don't know if that is because it does not exist and I should look elsewhere, or, if I should be investigating writing my own - I would rather not write my own as my first exposure to Drupal.
Note that I also have minimal exposure to Configuration Management sytems in general, but, I do know that we desire to track machines, equipment, people, projects, software (with versions) and how they are associated.
A small pointer is appreciated to help me narrow down my search. If I cannot find an appropriate module then I will evaluate creating one myself that we can deploy on Drupal and I will compare that against existing solutions (such as COTS software).
Comments
Drupal doesn't work like
Drupal doesn't work like other systems the way you are thinking. To track machinery, you would create a content type (which is a data object) and attach fields (which are like properties) to it.
For example, the machinery entity may have:
* Name
* Brand
* Model
* Year
* Location
This is an abstract data type that lets you create multiple pieces of machinery with these properties. You may then have another content type, 'locations', with the following fields:
* Name
* Address
* Co-ordinates (for a map)
* Manager
* Pieces of machinery
And then you can connect machinery:location and location:pieces-of-machinery together. With these relationships, you can then use the Views module to create lists, for example lists of machinery by location, or lists of locations by type of machinery, or whatever you need.
Drupal is extremely dynamic this way. So you won't find complete plugins that do everything, like you would in wordpress or other CMS, rather you use the dynamic system to customize whatever it is that you need, using various modules to fill in the gaps (for example, you would need a module to handle the coordinates, and display them on a map).
So develop it from the start
OK, it is what I feared. I need to define every type I desire to track, how they link, how to display, reports, interactions, there is no starting place other than raw Drupal and plugins that may help with certain display stuff.
That's how Drupal works. It's
That's how Drupal works. It's a steep learning curve, and you'll probably end up banging your head against the keyboard while building your first site - pretty much everyone does. But in the end its complexity is its strength.
I am sure you are correct
I am sure you are correct (with respect to banging my head on the keyboard), and it will certainly give me full control over everything. I had expected to find something like case tracker (https://drupal.org/project/casetracker), which claims base functionality with lots of work to finish it so that someone who already knew the ins and outs had made some basic decisions related to organization.
I appreciate your feedback, now I need to make a decision on whether or not we will try this on Drupal. Meantime, i am reading a rather large Apress book on Drupal. :-)