In rforbiodatascience22/group_6_shiny: shinyDogma

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)

Group: 6
Group members:

• Esben Vestergaard Øyan
• Eskild Fisker Angen
• Joachim Breitenstein
• Mathias Rahbek-Borre
• William Hagedorn-Rasmussen

Discussions

What did you find most challenging about creating a shiny app?

Usually when programming, a script is run from the top down. This is not the case for a shiny app. The workflow is then way different. Further, a ton of new functions were introduced and this created a lot of confusion. There were simply a lot of new stuff to grasp. Also, figuring out exactly what 'ui' and 'server' meant in this regard.

What do you feel are the benefits and challenges with using golem for app development?

A clear benefit is, that it sets up the whole app as a package. This makes it all structured, streamlined and universal. That function also impose a challenge, as the load of new functions/files seem overwhelming. Especially for beginners who don't know how to exploit all of these features (e.g. us).

Maintaining reproducibility when using shiny apps is a challenge. As an example, some pharma-companies display databases to medical doctors for pointy-clicky data exploration. What are your thoughts on maintaining reproducibility in that scenario? What if the database is updated or the app is updated with new or changed functionality?

Unless the pointy-clicky app has a account-based backlog, reproducibility of searches will be difficult and maybe impossible across versions. A purely point-and-click interface will make difficult large databases difficult to navigate, and doctors might have to rely on memory of certain entries.

What other challenges and limitations do you see shiny apps may have? Please elaborate.

As with packages, there can be a lot of dependencies. If a package is updated/changed, and the shiny app is re-deployed, it might not work as intended. The app then requires maintenance.

Links to app and GitHub

Shiny app
GitHub repo

rforbiodatascience22/group_6_shiny documentation built on April 10, 2022, 11:05 a.m.