Refactor existing database code into a genuine DAL module

[dondi]

Our existing database code needs a refactor to a full-fledged DAL, especially if our database capabilities will continue to expand.

[Onariaginosa]

I think I created a sort of DAL. I isolated the querying of the expression database and getting a response into a file called grnsight-dal.js and made the database-controller compatible with querying to the network database as well. I also cleaned up the code a bit so there is less repetitions. This is in the Onariaginosa branch.

[dondi]

Upon review of the work so far, the direction looks good and next steps are:

1. Pull out the database code from the database-controller.js file and place it in dal/expression-database.js (or similar), with database-controller.js being renamed and very likely getting a lot smaller than it is now
2. The work done in grnsight-dal.js actually pertains to the API rather than the database and has been separated out as a new issue Consolidate existing web app API calls into an abstraction layer #957

[Onariaginosa]

This is complete

[dondi]

Code is reviewed and will go out with the next GRNsight release.

[dondi]

DAL code was merged into beta but when it was deployed to the GRNsight server it produced an error relating to a new import statement—we’ll need to look into this.

[dondi]

In order to try a new deployment, make sure to do the following:

• git checkout beta
• git pull

This is because we reverted beta to a prior state in order to keep the service running.

[dondi]

Need to review status of this with @Onariaginosa

[dondi]

Confirmed as finished