DEXiWare

Introduction

DEXiWare is a reusable software framework for building cooperative decision support systems (DSS) based on qualitative multi-criteria models developed with the DEX method.

It provides a standardized, modular environment that integrates backend services, a user-friendly frontend, and a DSS engine for assessment, scenario analysis, and optimization.

By abstracting common DSS components, DEXiWare enables rapid, reliable development of domain-specific systems across agriculture, environment, and sustainability domains — reducing development time while ensuring transparency and usability.

Developed by the EcoEnvAI team at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, DEXiWare has been applied in several European research projects to create operational DSS tools:

• Pathfinder (TRUE Project): Sustainability assessment of legume-based value chains ( live tool | project )
• Resource Amplifier (TOMRES Project): Optimization of resource use in tomato production systems ( live tool | project )
• Market Avenue Generator (RADIANT Project): Support for business model writing for value-chain diversification ( live tool | project )

Pathfinder serves as a reference implementation demonstrating what can be built using DEXiWare in this public repository. The decision models and indicator factsheets used in Pathfinder are openly documented and archived on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/ZENODO.3706712).

Note: Development of DEXiWare began during the TRUE project where Pathfinder was first conceived, before the names DEXiWare and Pathfinder were adopted. As a result, some internal components still use the legacy name prefix true.

Quickstart (Docker Compose)

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine + Compose)

NB: When cloning the repository, ensure that the path does not contain special characters (e.g. 'č') as this may cause issues with running assessments.

Configure

Copy .env.example to .env and adjust values as needed.

Important: docker-compose.yaml is configured to fail fast if required environment variables are missing.

The values in .env.example are suitable for local development only. For any deployment, you should change at least:

• SESSION_SECRET
• ADMIN_PASSWORD
• DB_PASS
• PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD

If you intend to use registration and password reset functionality, configure SMTP_* and EMAIL_FROM.

Start

docker compose up --build -d

Access

• Frontend: http://localhost:8080/true/
• Swagger UI (via nginx reverse proxy): http://localhost:8080/api-docs/
• pgAdmin: http://localhost:5050/ (set by PGADMIN_PORT in .env, defaults to 5050 in .env.example)

Login to the application using the credentials from .env (ADMIN_USERNAME / ADMIN_PASSWORD).

What happens on first start

On container startup the backend automatically:

• Applies database migrations
• Creates/updates the initial admin account from .env
• Optionally seeds example data if SEED_EXAMPLE_DATA=true

Stop

docker compose down

To delete all local data (Postgres volume, pgAdmin config), use:

docker compose down -v

pgAdmin: connect to the Postgres container

pgAdmin cannot reliably auto-provision a server using environment variables (and passwords cannot be imported). Add the server once via the UI.

1. Login to pgAdmin using PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL / PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD from .env.

2. Create a new server with connection values that match the DB_* settings in your .env. The values below are the defaults from .env.example.

   • Host name/address: db
   • Port: 5432
   • Maintenance database: dexiware_db
   • Username: dexiware_user
   • Password: dexiware_password

Important: Use db (the Docker service name), not localhost.

API documentation

When running with Docker Compose, Swagger UI is available at:

• http://localhost:8080/api-docs/

Database ERD

An entity-relationship diagram (ERD) of the PostgreSQL schema is included in the repository:

• Open ERD image