Logo Valentin Staubmann

Work

IQOQI

https://iqoqi.at

One of my main tasks at IQOQI is to develop and maintain various websites, including the institute's website and an intranet called IVA.
Starting from scratch, I established the IVA as a central part of our institute and it is now used to manage data from the administration and research areas. The IVA now offers a wide range of tools to simplify daily procedures and libraries to collect a wide range of data, from scientific publications to upcoming events.
Some of this data is visible on our website, so I started developing Joomla components and modules. I like the idea of how these systems are clearly separated but connected by a solid tie for what I used SOAP.

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The IVA

As a foundation for the IVA I created APM (Advanced PHP Managed), a LAMP driven framework.
I stick to PHP despite the plethora of modern technology available because it is easy to maintain, fast and portable.
The framework covers all my needs for authorisation using LDAP, database access, caching, exception and error handling. It also handles application level objects that take care of reports, AJAX requests and so on.

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In my opinion, this is the most rewarding part of the job.
You create a new file and at some point you have a bunch of files, libraries, styles, configs and a working "thing" that does exactly what you want it to do.

Servers

When I started at the institute, there was a website that was hosted by a third party and was very complicated and difficult to manage. After a while I convinced my supervisor to host the site himself and to use a different technology.
As my hobbyhorse at that time was PHP and Joomla, I used that to implement the project. In the beginning everything was on a server with a LAMP installation.
With time I implemented the authentication with LDAP and also installed an own server including backup server for it. Then the database came on its own server to improve the speed of the whole system.
As location for the servers we use server housing at an external provider. To improve accessibility I created space for all servers in the house. Including the procurement and installation of the rack and server hardware.
As server operating system I have always used Debian Linux, currently in version 12 Bookworm.

Some incidents, especially longer power outages, have caused me to rethink the whole system. Thereby the idea was born to virtualize our whole server landscape.

Now hosted externally again but with several virtual server instances adapted for the purpose, the system runs stable and is very well suited for scaling.

  • PHP
  • Debian
  • Full Stack
  • HAProxy
  • Founding
  • Independent