Make Ralph functionalities more obvious to new users

[Leobouloc]

When I first discovered Ralph, it took me some digging into the code and discussions with team members to fully understand the multiple facets of Ralph. In particular, the data processing/validating tool AND the LRS server. I believe we would benefit from improving the doc and code structure to make clearer these different aspects.

Below is a first suggestion. Perhaps we could discuss here of other ways to make Ralph more accessible to first time users ?

Separate data processing and LRS management in cli ?

Currently, the ralph command is used both to:

• read / write / transform statements
• manage the Ralph LRS by creating users (by writing to auth.json)

This seems like very different tasks. I am wondering if it would make things clearer for new users to separate these functions by having two commands. For example ralph and ralph-LRS-admin ?

[jmaupetit]

Moving this issue to a new discussion!

As it's a lot of work to maintain a CLI, I would prefer only have a single ralph command. But, I think you are right that it needs some clarification.

Maybe having an lrs sub-command would mitigate the situation:

# the former `ralph runserver` command would become:
ralph lrs run

# the former `ralph auth` command would become:
ralph lrs auth

WDYT?

[Leobouloc]

Continuing the conversation on clarity of the documentation.

• Currently the landing page for the documentation lists 3 main functionalities (LRS, CLI, and Library). Unless I am mistaken, CLI and library cover the same functionalities (data fetch, push, validate, convert) but are simply different interfaces. I think it would make sense to describe Ralph as having 2 functionalities (LRS and ETL tools for example);

• Additionally, the current documentation lists 3 "Features" but which are not the the same as the 3 functionalities (except for LRS). I think the "Features" section should at least include the 3 functionalities indicated in the landing page (in the same terms to be less confusing).