RAMP: Record and Activity Management Program

Welcome to the RAMP Project.

RAMP

Ramp is a program that supports domain expert access to a relational database. Whereas a program like phpMyAdmin is aimed at database administrators who need to update and maintain a database, Ramp is aimed at the store owner, librarian, registrar, or other professional who needs to populate, view, and update data in a structured set of tables.

Ramp's software treats the tables in a database generically, but provides reasonably light-weight methods for customizing the user's interaction with those tables to give the appearance of an application-specific program. The two primary mechanisms for this customization are activity lists, which generate formatted pages of grouped activities with descriptions, and table settings, which provide customized views of tables. Activity files and table settings are created as ini configuration files, making it relatively easy to create a Ramp-based application to interact with any new set of tables.

RELEASE INFORMATION

RAMP/SMART Release 0.9.2. Released on October 12, 2014.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Ramp is set up to work with tables defined in a MySQL database, using the Zend Framework.

AMP and ZF1

RAMP (Record and Activity Management Program) was developed using [Apache HTTP Server 2] apache, [MySQL Community Server 5] mysql (5.5), [PHP 5] php (5.3) and [Zend Framework 1] zf1 (1.11.11). It has also been tested with later versions up to MySQL 5.6.13, PHP 5.4.19, and Zend Framework 1.12. It does not work yet with [Zend 2] zf2, which is a completely redesigned version of the Zend Framework.

Markdown, Twitter Bootstrap, and twitter-bootstrap-zf1

Ramp also uses Michel Fortin's [PHP Markdown Lib 1.3] md, which depends on PHP 5.3, for converting Markdown text to HTML, and [twitter-bootstrap-zf1] tbz, a library to work with [Twitter Bootstrap 2] tb and Zend Framework 1. Ramp uses several of the Glyph icons provided in Twitter Bootstrap by Glyphicons.

Ramp also includes some dependencies on HTML 5. Thus the full list of dependencies is:

Apache HTTP Server 2
MySQL Community Server, version 5.3 or later
PHP, version 5.3 or later
Zend Framework 1, version 1.11.10 or later (but not Zend Framework 2)
PHP Markdown Lib 1.3
twitter-bootstrap-zf
Twitter Bootstrap 2 (but not Twitter Bootstrap 3)
Browsers that support HTML 5

The current version of Ramp includes bundled versions of the Zend Framework 1, the Markdown library, the twitter-bootstrap-zf1 library, and a subset of Twitter Bootstrap 2. (See the [License section] license-section for information about the licenses for those components.) See [INSTALL.md] install for more details about the software infrastructure on which Ramp depends, including specific Apache modules.

INSTALLATION

1. Download or clone this repository under the Document Root for your server or your personal web page area.

2. Set up a virtual host for the Ramp Demo (if possible).

   If you have the appropriate powers on your server, create a virtual host for this repository. (Zend, and therefore RAMP, works better under its own virtual host.) The actual steps to take depend on your operating system, but involve adding the virtual host information to your system and then restarting the web server. For example, on a Debian or Ubuntu system you would do the following using sudo:

   • Copy installation/rampdemo.conf to /etc/apache2/sites-available.
   • Edit the rampdemo.conf copy in the sites-available directory to set an appropriate ServerAdmin, ServerName and DocumentRoot.
   • Enable the site: a2ensite rampdemo.
   • Restart the apache server (e.g., service apache2 reload).

3. Set up the ramp_demo database:

   • Go to the installation/RampDemoSetup subdirectory.

   • Copy createRampDemoMysqlAccts.sql (e.g., to createMysqlAccts.sql) and make sure the file is readable only to you. Edit it and change the DBA and Ramp Demo usernames and passwords (or at least the passwords) to provide the most basic security.

   • Go into mysql as root and read in the new file and setupRampDemoDB.sql:

       SOURCE createMysqlAccts.sql;
       SOURCE setupRampDemoDB.sql;
       quit
     

4. Create a customized configuration file with the correct username and password:

   • Go to the configs subdirectory.

   • Copy template_custom_properties.ini to custom_properties.ini and make sure the file is readable only to you and the www-data group (or whatever group your web server is part of). Edit custom_properties.ini and change the username and password to the Ramp Demo username and password set in the createMysqlAccts.sql file above. You may wish to customize other properties as well (see the README file in the configs directory for more details).

   • Create an application.ini file that contains the following "building block" files in the specified order: ramp_basics.ini, ramp_defaults.ini, and custom_properties.ini ramp_demo.ini. For example:

       cat ramp_basics.ini ramp_defaults.ini >application.ini
       cat custom_properties.ini ramp_demo.ini >>application.ini
     

5. If you are using git, add the following files and directories to your .gitignore file in the top directory of this Ramp instance (the directory above application, installation, and public).

       installation/installDB/createMysqlAccts.sql
       application/configs/custom_properties.ini
       application/configs/application.ini
   

6. If you are running a browser on the same machine as your server, you can bring up the Ramp Demo using the virtual host ServerName as the URL (e.g., rampdemo/). If not, unless the new virtual host is being served by DNS (and, therefore, publicly accessible), you will need to make changes on the client machines to see it. For example, this might be a matter of editing /etc/hosts on the client machines and adding lines that resolve the virtual server names from the appropriate machine. For example,

       123.45.0.67     rampdemo
   

   Having done this, you should be able to get to the demo by just typing rampdemo as the URL in your browser. If you are not using virtual hosts, you can get to the Ramp Demo as a subdirectory under your server name, e.g.,

       /my.servername.com/ramp/public/
   

Please see [INSTALL.md] install for more detailed information. (Under construction...)

LICENSE INFORMATION

The source files for Ramp are released under a BSD 2-Clause license. You can find a copy of this license in [LICENSE.md] license.

[TODO: Need to choose the correct CC license for documentation. Do activity files and table settings fit under software or documentation for licensing purposes?]

The following software may be included with this project:

Zend Framework 1 (version 1.11.11): The Zend Framework license is included as [LICENSE-ZF1.txt] zf-license.

PHP Markdown Lib 1.3: The Markdown Library license is included as [License-php-markdown-lib.md] md-license.

twitter-bootstrap-zf1 and Twitter Bootstrap: The Twitter-Bootstrap-ZF1 license is included as [README-twitter-bootstrap-zf1.md] tbz-license; the Twitter Bootstrap license as [LICENSE-bootstrap-2.3.2] tb-license.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Ramp team would like to thank all the contributors to the Ramp project and the institutional supporters who have provided time, expertise, and money.

Institutional supporters include:

Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Njala University, Sierra Leone
The Arcus Center for Socal Justice Leadership, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA

Individual contributors include:

Keaton Adams
Giancarlo Anemone
Alyce Brady
Christopher Cain
Katrina Carlsen
Chris Clerville
Ryan Davis
Ashton Galloway
Guilherme Guedes
Simon Haile
Tristan Kiel
Lucas Kushner
Justin Leatherwood
Tendai Mudyiwa
William Reichle
Renjie Song
Kyle Sunden
Jiakan Wang
Riley Wetzel
Jae Hyun (Andrew) Choe
David Daly
Ana Paula Dos Santos Dantas
Sam Evans-Golden
Kevin Ewing
Sapana Gupta
Austin Haffey
Rana Hayajneh
Conrad Hipkins-Jones
Kevin Joh
Sarah Manski
Griffin Smalley
Hayley Smith
Shang (Sally) Sun
Alec Wright