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<h1>Architecture Overview</h1>
<p>
    This article explains how the different parts of Smeedee are connected.
    After reading this you should be able to roughly understand the overall
    structure of Smeedee.
</p>

<p>
Basically, Smeedee is designed to do two things:
<ol>
    <li>Get data from external systems by executing integration code wrapped in
    tasks.</li>
    <li>Show data on the screen through widgets</li>
</ol>
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<p>
    The flowchart below shows the overall data flow of Smeedee, and how the
    different components are connected.
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    <img src="images/smeedee_data_flow.png" alt="Smeedee Data Flow Diagram" style="width:90%;" />
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    In the diagram there are four distinct parts that are all important in
    understanding Smeedee:
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<h3>The Task Scheduler</h3>
<p>
    The scheduler is a Windows Service running on the Smeedee Server. The
    scheduler is responsible for managing the harvesting of data, as well as
    potentially running other server side tasks. The actual data-harvesting is
    performed by integration code contained in Tasks.  When the Scheduler
    starts it loads all the tasks in configured in the database in a plug-in
    fashion.  Each task is isolated from all the others, and work
    independently.  An instance of a task tell the scheduler how often thy want
    to be run data, and the scheduler keeps track of each task and dispatchs
    them for execution according to the interval the task wanted. The task then
    goes into whatever system it is designed to harvest from, and fetches data
    from there. For example there is a Source Control task that asks Subversion
    or TFS for the commit log. The task then translates the data from the
    external system into a Domain Model known to Smeedee and stores the
    harvested data in the Smeedee Database.
</p>

<h3>The Smeedee Database</h3>
<p>
    When data is harvested from an external system, it is stored in the Smeedee
    database. The database is a SQLite database that keeps a history of all the
    data ever harvested. This data aggregation enables users of the Smeedee
    system to present historical data in creative ways. For example trends can
    be calculated when historical data is available. For system such as
    Subversion, there is already historical data in the external system.
    Syncronizing this into Smeedee helps stability and also relieves the
    external system, as the Smeedee Database acts as a cache between clients
    and the external system: One request from one client does not result in one
    request to the external system.
</p>
<p>
    Data is translated between a relational model and objects in our domain
    model using the NHibernate ORM.
</p>

<h3>The Smeedee Server (Smeedee Web Services)</h3>
<p>
    The Smeedee server is a webserver hosted in Internet Information Services
    (IIS). The server exposes a series of Web Services that provides access to
    the Smeedee Database. The Smeedee Server also provides access to the
    Smeedee client.
</p>

<h3>The Smeedee Client</h3>
<p>
    The client application is a Silverlight application that runs in the
    browser. The client display is composed of a number of widgets running in a
    slideshow like manner. Widgets ask the Smeedee server for fresh data from
    the database as often as they require. Widgets can combine information from
    the entire database to create a visualization of the data. E.g. there is a
    widget that shows the latest commits in the source control system. The
    Widget shows the commit message, and then combines the Source control data
    with user data to show name and picture of the person who performed
    the commit. Whenever a person performs a commit to the source control system, the
    message along with name and picture will be included in the widget shortly
    after.
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