Introduction⚓︎

The purpose of the Application Quality BB is to support the evolution of a scientific algorithm (processing workflow) from a research project to one that can be utilised in a production environment. To achieve this, the Application Quality BB provides tools for verifying non-functional requirements - including code quality, software development best practice for open reproducible science, and optimisation through performance testing.

The Application Quality BB delivers a set of services that can be used in automated pipelines that are linked to the source and runtime resources of processing workflow developments. Dedicated test environments provide representative sandboxed execution services that can be used as a gateway to production.

About the Application Quality Building Block⚓︎

The Application Quality BB provides tooling that supports and encourages the development of Processing Workflows in accordance with software engineering best practices – whilst providing an environment to test their workflow execution and optimise the code.

The Application Quality BB is modular and integrates a high number of third-party FOSS tools and applications that are traditionally used by software developers to verify, optimise and document their code.

Capabilities⚓︎

The capabilities of the Application Quality BB may be grouped in the following categories, each of which is implemented by a different set of tools that may be integrated into automated development pipelines:

Development Best Practice⚓︎

Analysis of source code and repositories for code quality, and adherence to development best practices for reproducible open science. Users are provided with a set of services that allow linking their development resources – for example, connecting the tooling to their Git and container image repositories. Static Code Analysis tooling (e.g. SonarQube) is used to analyse connected git repositories, report code quality issues, detect security vulnerabilities and advise best practice.s

Application Quality Tooling⚓︎

Set of tools that complement the Development Best Practice tools. Examples include vulnerability scanning of application runtime artefacts such as containers.

Application Performance⚓︎

Integrated tools supporting performance testing and optimisation of processing workflows, supported by test execution environments. To implement this capability, the Application Quality BB provides an environment in which processing workflows can be tested (executed). This test environment is sandboxed for development, such that it cannot impact operational systems. The test environment provides support for profiling, identifying bottlenecks and optimising application code.

Web-enabled Portal⚓︎

The Application Quality BB provides a Web Portal through which the tooling is accessed.

Operators may use the Web Portal to manage the integrated tools, configure pipelines, and access usage metrics. Users may use the Web Portal to monitor the execution of the pipelines and access the results.

Pipeline Automation⚓︎

The Application Quality BB supports the automated execution of pipelines triggered by updates to the applications resources (git, containers, etc.), as reported by the Automation Service via the Notification Service.