QMA Collections Intranet

Web-based Intranet for Qatar Museums (2012-2014)

Problem

The Qatar Museums Authority (via archive.org) had responsibility for a dozen or so new museums that were emerging to make Qatar a cultural hub for the Gulf. A single EMu database instance was set up with core data documentation standards, but access to EMu was limited to those who had registered user accounts on and access to the EMu client. Other museums staff, such as those in education, needed convenient access to essential information.

Solution

Inspired by the WordPress architecture, particularly its use of redirects, I conceived, architected and developed an intranet for the Qatar Museums Authority. This enabled Web access with custom views for each staff in museum, with session management integrated with MS Exchange. The user interface was responsive and implemented i18n, with instant toggle between English (left-to-right) and Arabic (right-to-left) — supported by a translation project to map all the necessary cataloguing fields. The resulting system was deployed to all the Museums and also the office of the Chair of QMA.

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Architecture:

Multi-site architecture where each site (museum) has its own configuration; URL rewrites provide friendly URLs.
Authentication: integration with Active Directory
Authorisation: Per-site custom role-based authorisation supports Apache htgroups, EMu Groups (Registry module), and Active Directory LDAP

Features:

Customisable fields for the search and display of results and object pages
Data: XML template system generates a PHP XML template from the KE EMu XML schema
Presentation: self-contained XSLT transforms XML to HTML, kept separate from program logic
Session handling for runtime preferences
i18n internationalization English-Arabic (using gettext) – language toggle for each page
Image display configurable with IMu query optimisation
Responsive web design with collapsible columns with drag and drop panels, optimised for iPad.

Development environment:
*Oracle VirtualBox running Debian Linux, NetBeans, Subversion;
*Apache, LDAP, PHP (with IMu API), HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, jQueryUI.

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Problem

Solution

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