Arches Lintels - lowering the barrier to entry for Arches

Samuel Scandrett, Knowledge Integration

The idea is simple, to create a .exe runnable application, initially only for Windows, which allows Arches and its underlying components (such as PostgreSQL/PostGIS and Elasticsearch) to be installed and run for testing and experimentation purposes.

The audience for this application is less technically skilled individuals. Arches has a rather complicated installation process, consisting of many components and key stages. Installation by less technically skilled individuals can take days, especially when battling through error messages and environment specific issues. Introducing tools such as Docker will be insufficient as a solution, as it often requires additional skills. For some, this can be enough to be put off Arches and begin the search for an easier solution.

This is where Arches Lintels comes in. A lintel is a crucial load-bearing beam placed above (often Arched) doors or windows. Their purpose is to support load for the structure above. Arches Lintels aims to achieve the same: supporting an implementation of Arches on Windows.

Arches Lintels offers to help interested individuals or organisations experiment and get a feel of Arches before committing to deploying the platform in production. It helps to lower the barrier to entry, reducing the technical knowledge and experience required.