[katello-devel] Systems with the same name in the UI

[Malini Rao]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lukas Zapletal" <lzap at redhat.com>
To: katello-devel at redhat.com
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 3:51:37 AM
Subject: Re: [katello-devel] Systems with the same name in the UI

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 01:55:21PM +0200, Jan Pazdziora wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 04:59:28PM +0200, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
> > Hey,
> > 
> > as I mentioned on the demo, if there are multiple systems with the same
> > name, in the UI list they look exactly the same. We might like to add
> > something to differentiate them.
> > 
> > The logical option is to add UUID there, but if you open up system list
> > you'll see there is not plenty of space on each line and UUID is pretty
> > long. That would practically mean to extend each record with one line.
> > 
> > Another approach could be to give each system a color square that would
> > be calculated as a hash from it's UUID. This works pretty well, I
> > already used it in one project. If you'd hover over it, it would show a
> > bubble with the UUID. Saves space and you can still visually
> > differentiate among systems with the same name, but this is not good for
> > color-blind people.
> > 
> > Any other options? Recommendations?
> 
> Registration date / time since registration.
>

I think this is the best option.

-- 
Later,

 Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
 #katello #systemengine


Sorry to chime in late on this conversation. I think colored squares will fast become unusable and the value of deriving the color as a hash from the UUID is very interesting but does not inform the user in a specific way - to them it is just a color and the connection to the UUID is not evident.

I agree with the set of people who pointed at the issue of allowing exactly the same system name. Is there a definite need to do that? Can we avoid (preferred) or warn and overwrite existing ( for e.g in the usecase bk mentioned about blowing out a machine and re-provisioning it etc., can Katello not clean up the old mess so that there are no 2 systems with the same name?) If no to these questions, then I would agree with Bryan/ Tom that for those systems that Katello detects same names and displays a little exclamation icon preceding the name to indicate there is an issue with the name and upon hover on the icon it will show a tooltip that includes all distinguishing attributes (not just UUIDs which I am not sure if is a system-way of distinguishing stuff or meaningful for humans to interpret). Admittedly, the information to distinguish systems is a hover away and can't be compared side by side but if this is an edge case where systems have the same name, I would leave the UI uncluttered by not adding another row with the UUID or other attributes to the list. 

-Malini
_______________________________________________
katello-devel mailing list
katello-devel at redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/katello-devel