MongoDB stores data (documents in MongoDB terms) in collections organized in databases (so the structure has two levels). There is one special database admin for user information, permissions and passwords. Some query operations can span collections in the same database, but usually not collections across databases.
Therefore polyDB uses just two databases inside a MongoDB instance: Data is stored in collections inside the database polyDB. Users and permissions are stored in admin.
In the MongoDB instance the polyDB uses just one database and organizes everything in collections within this database.
In polyDB objects are stored in polyDB collections, and these collections can be organized in (nested) sections. For each data collection there is an accompanying collection containing meta information on the data. The name of the MongoDB collection is composed from the collection and the chain of sections the collection is in. A family of objects collection organized in the subsection sub of section section is stored in the MongoDB collection section.sub.collection. The meta information is in _collectionInfo.section.sub.collection.
For example, the family of smooth reflexive polytopes is in the collection SmoothReflexive in the subsection Lattice of the section Polytopes. In terms of MongoDB, the dtaa is stored in the in the MongoDB collection Polytopes.Lattice.SmoothReflexive of the database polyDB, and the meta information is in _collectionInfo.Polytopes.Lattice.SmoothReflexive in the same database.
Any documentation for the sections and collections are in the collections _collectionInformation.section.sub.collection and _sectionInfo.section, _sectionInfo.section.sub etc.
Data in the data collection is described by two documents in the meta collection:
description: A short description of the data, only for internal use, this will not be displayed.
maintainer: Maintainer of the data in polyDB, will be added to documents in the collection
creator: Name of person creating the data, will be added to documents in the collection
contributor: Name of the person who prepared the data for inclusion onto polyDB, will be added to documents in the collection
fields: A list of data fields contained in a document in the collection. This can be used to produce a list of data that can be queried from the collection.
polydb_version: the version of polyDB used to store the data
packages: Here software packages can store additional information they need to access the data
polyDB we do not use this as it is based on an old draft of the schema language and has modifications from the standard. The schema is stored in a schema document with the three entries
section: the section of the collection the schema applies to
collection: the collection the schema applies to
schema: The actual json schema. Both json schemas and MongoDB use $ as a special character. We need to replace this in the schema for stroring as this would lead to conflicts otherwise. In polyDB we use __ (two underscores) for this.
The MongoDB _id of the info document is info.<polydb version> and of the schema document schema.<polydb version>, where <polydb version. is the polydb version number for which the two documents apply.
Here is an example of a meta information document, here is the schema document as it is contained in polyDB, and here is the original json schema.
The documentation of a polyDB collection is stored in the MongoDB collection _collectionInfo.section.sub.collectionname. Some information on sections and subsections is in _sectionInfo.section, _sectionInfo.Section.Subsection_one, etc. An example for a documentation document of a collection is here, a documentation document for a section is here. This should sufficiently explain the structure of the documents.
MongoDB has a role based permission model. We use this for polyDB to organize read and write access to the collections.
For each collection there are two roles, one with just read access, and one with write access. For a collection collection in the subsection subsection_one of section section the two roles are
section.subsection_one.collection for read access
section.subsection_one.collection.admin for write access
(there may be more (or no) subsections in the list).
For public read access to the data there is one role polymakeUser that inherits the read access roles of all public collections. This role is assigned to all users. In addition, a user can get assigned read access roles of non-public collections and write access roles to collections she or he wants to modify (add, delete or replace documents, edit the schema and meta data, edit the documentation).
For general public access there is a user polymake that only has the polymakeUser role and password database. With this user you can log into the MongoDB instance runngung the polyDB and read all public data.
Creating roles and users, and assigning roles to users requires MonoDB the user admin role built into MongoDB, and thus is limited to administrators of polyDB. Contact us if you