{"id":4260,"date":"2016-11-23T16:25:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T21:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/?p=4260"},"modified":"2016-12-09T16:18:47","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T21:18:47","slug":"the-matlab-store-at-jaguar-land-rover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2016\/11\/23\/the-matlab-store-at-jaguar-land-rover\/","title":{"rendered":"The MATLAB Store at Jaguar Land Rover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you work at an enterprise where a lot of your peers also write MATLAB code, you might have pondered the following problem: how can we share MATLAB files with each other? At first this seems like an easily solved problem. Just dump everything you want to share into a big directory that everybody knows about.<\/p>\n<p>But right away complications arise. Here are some issues that come up with a company code repository.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Submission<\/strong> &#8211; How do you submit code? What format should it take? Who decides what goes in?<br \/>\n<strong>Organization<\/strong> &#8211; How is it organized? Who curates the code? Who supports it?<br \/>\n<strong>Discovery<\/strong> &#8211; How will people find out about it? How is it promoted?<br \/>\n<strong>Distribution<\/strong> &#8211; How do people download and install the code?<\/p>\n<p>Enterprises that create simple code repositories (like the aforementioned single-directory approach) are rarely happy with the results. The resulting directory is like a big &#8220;junk drawer&#8221; filled with unmotivated odds and ends.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"316\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4263\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/files\/junk.jpg\" alt=\"junk\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--\n<span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/109521686@N05\/26707175366\/\">Image<\/a> courtesy of Marn\u00e9 Lierman<\/span>\n--><\/p>\n<p>Moving to the other end of the spectrum, we sometimes hear this question from people who use and enjoy the MATLAB Central File Exchange: can you give us a local version of the File Exchange, one that will just work internally and privately at our company? We don&#8217;t think this is a bad idea, but the File Exchange is a complex piece of software that&#8217;s deeply tied to our internal systems. It&#8217;s just not built to ship to other locations.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, we have seen many enterprises come to grief over how to share MATLAB code internally. I know of several failures, but today I want to tell you about one spectacular success. Jaguar Land Rover is a British auto manufacturer, and they use a lot of MATLAB. Working with the MathWorks Consulting team, they created something they call the MATLAB Store. It looks like this.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"429\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4265\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/files\/jlr-matlab-store.png\" alt=\"jlr-matlab-store\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The JLR MATLAB Store contains code that is shared among specific teams and also code that is shared across all engineers at the company. It leverages the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/help\/matlab\/matlab_prog\/create-and-share-custom-matlab-toolboxes.html\">toolbox packaging introduced in release R2014b<\/a>. It includes ratings, comments, and download counters. The Store is slick and it works very well, but I want to show you the secret ingredient for its success. This is Dave Barry.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"438\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4262\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/files\/dave-barry.jpg\" alt=\"dave-barry\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Dave works at Jaguar Land Rover, and an important part of his job is to make sure that the MATLAB Store is healthy and successful. So when you look at a picture of the store, don&#8217;t imagine that it&#8217;s just a matter of getting the right code repository in place. Jaguar Land Rover went out of their way to create a culture of competence and collaboration. They value this goal so highly that they have dedicated staff like Dave to promote and support MATLAB and the MATLAB Store. Dave recently gave a talk about this topic at the UK MATLAB Expo. I encourage you to watch it here.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/videos\/the-adoption-of-matlab-apps-and-toolboxes-at-jaguar-land-rover-123622.html\">The Adoption of MATLAB Apps and Toolboxes at Jaguar Land Rover<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By now you may be thinking, okay Ned, you&#8217;ve convinced me that I don&#8217;t want the Junk Drawer approach, and I realize I can&#8217;t have my own private File Exchange, but can you please give me a copy of the Jaguar Land Rover MATLAB Store? The answer is no, I can&#8217;t. It IS lovely, but it belongs to Jaguar Land Rover. I suppose you could ask them for a copy of it. If you&#8217;d like something like that built for you, you can always contact our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/services\/consulting\/\">Consulting Services group<\/a>. But MathWorks consultant David Sampson has an even better deal for you: he&#8217;s built a simple MATLAB Minimart with the most important elements of the JLR MATLAB Store built right in. And it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/matlabcentral\/fileexchange\/59769-matlab-minimart\">available to you right now for free on the File Exchange<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kind of meta, getting a mini File Exchange from the File Exchange, huh?<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the next two posts on this blog (<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2016\/12\/05\/share-and-manage-your-toolboxes-using-matlab-minimart\/\">Part 1<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2016\/12\/09\/updating-toolboxes-from-a-matlab-minimart-store\/\">Part 2<\/a>) are going to be from David Sampson. He&#8217;ll tell you how to set up and use the MATLAB Minimart. That&#8217;s terrific news, but remember it&#8217;s only part of the solution. If you want to create a MATLAB code repository at your university, your company, your working group or department, I leave you with this question: who is your Dave Barry? Who is going to be dedicated to making that repository healthy and successful? Because until you have built a true culture of collaboration, you&#8217;re probably just making another junk drawer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"overview-image\"><img decoding=\"async\"  class=\"img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/files\/junk.jpg\" onError=\"this.style.display ='none';\" \/><\/div>\n<p>If you work at an enterprise where a lot of your peers also write MATLAB code, you might have pondered the following problem: how can we share MATLAB files with each other? At first this seems like&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2016\/11\/23\/the-matlab-store-at-jaguar-land-rover\/\">read more >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4260"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4323,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260\/revisions\/4323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}