Updated AMDS Schema + web app

I updated the AMDS schema with a new version in preparation for the release of AMDS-BioSense's Alpha services tomorrow.

I'm sure Vaughn will tell you about the details. Basically, the service tool we're using didn't like referenced types, so I remade the schema to use inline defined elements. I know this is bad form, but it's what we had to do to get the tool to work. If anyone can generate a WSDL file with Introduce using the March 30 schema we'll be very grateful. Otherwise, the example XML didn't change at all so documents valid under the March 30 schema are still valid under the April 30 schema.

Other changes are we changed all our xs:date and xs:dateTime elements to be xs:string, again to make it easier for the AMDS-BioSense Alpha services. Axis1.4 didn't really like date objects very much.

Finally, I added an optional "AllCount" sibling element to "Count" so that services that want to explicitly return the denominator can do so. This was added at the suggestion of the Harvard ESP:SS folks as their data provider doesn't actually return the counts for every single condition type so a query for Classifier=ALL would not actually return the denominator.

I also created a sourceforge project for the schemas so 1) we can do some more detailed version control than the wiki provides and 2) others can host the schemas if they so desire.

The guts are there, the data isn't.

I spent a good portion of today wiring up all of the behavior for taking AMDS service data and populating it into polygons, but I have had issues with the client so I cannot get data, and I didn't have enough time to make a data-faking routine. So there isn't going to be anything for me to deploy tomorrow.

I am guessing tomorrow I will get the client working and then will spend a lot of time debugging the behavior, and then I will spend a lot of time actually flattening and splitting the google map and the server selector next week.

The flattening will allow for much better multi-selection of regions and conditions... I just hope the usability isn't too impacted. But I figure it will be rather obvious: first pane is to select the servers you want to pull-from... second pane is to navigate the data with the given charts/maps and better highlight the data from the chosen servers.

cagrid installer forum

The cagrid team has a thread on their knowledge center on potential scenarios for their installer. This may be of interest to PHGrid as it presents the potential for us to save a lot of the effort we currently spend on building VMs and supporting installs. We've been asked by cagrid to take a look at the scenarios and help them with use cases.

Metadata Madness Continued

Today, I got the code for the metadata capture executing through tests. I also re-learned a few things.

- Quick little stubs for imitating real services are neither quick nor little, but are always necessary if data is to be provided and you want to test your structures and plans.

- Use the types your given. Creating new types because they seem a bit clearer in your mind means you have to convert them.

- Draw things out. While what you code will rarely look like what you ended up drawing... it gets that tossable first attempt out of the way without having to do a lot of SVN adjustment.

Tomorrow, I try and show the metadata in the grid-viewer pane, and then I try and replicate data.

Metadata madness.

Today, I took the first step in getting to Rodsadai-with-grid-viewer settings, setting up how all the metadata would be stored, and discussing it with other people.

For now, we have settled on storing the server names and URL's in a database, and then populating the metadata from the service(s) dynamically. Thus, most of today has been spent filling out the infrastructure for a one-time database load in gridviewer.

Brian and I also discussed how the app would behave. Instead of the Quicksilver-esque selection and then map... there will be an intro page that will probably need the real-estate formerly taken by the map to show a server-list. The given list will change depending on what date ranges, regions, and conditions are picked (based on whether or not the servers support said items) and then, after the ranges and servers are chosen, the map will be loaded and viewed. Another nifty discussed was to have metadata popups over the available servers, so people would get an idea of which limitations each server had.

Otherwise, the big next step will be integrating with the client app Vaughn is developing. It will be needed to pull the metadata for given services and set up the loading pane.

Update to Service Registry structure

New category has been added to Service Registry:  Type
http://sites.google.com/site/phgrid/Home/service-registry

Grid services can now be differentiated from the Clients / Applications which can leverage those services.

Dyamic Maps of the Swine Flu Outbreak

These seem to be some of the most viewed maps to date:

1. http://healthmap.org/en

2. This page was created based on the CDC data link below:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/keir.clarke/swineflu.htm

CDC data: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/investigation.htm


3. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.639375,-110.390625&spn=15.738151,25.488281&z=5


4. http://www.pigflumap.com/

Supercomputing gets its own Superhero

"DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications), an EU-funded project that has linked a dozen of the world’s fastest supercomputers into one smoothly functioning transcontinental grid. "
.....
"Since DEISA started, just four and a half years ago, the aggregated peak computing power it can offer has multiplied by a factor of 300, from 30 teraflops (30 thousand billion floating point operations per second) to over a petaflop (a million billion operations per second)."
http://www.physorg.com/news158249258.html

VM Appliance with Mac Fusion

A second person has asked about runnin the VMWare appliance (v0.2 or higher) using VMWare's Mac player, Fusion. Fusion uses a little bit different file formats. This at first seems like a deal breaker, but there is a very handy utility described on infrageeks.

This script will converts your ovf file to the format that Fusion expects.

gridviewer is up

Greetings all,

So, this morning I posted gridviewer to the training node. Right now it is an empty shell being prepared for data and metadata, so it behaves a lot like the gmap-poly-web application, in that there is no data so the polygons will always show zero counts.

you can see it at http://ncphi.phgrid.net:8080/gridviewer/gmap-pane.jsp

The next steps are to set up a framework for handling multiple servers and metadata, reflect that capability in the framework by showing a changing server-list depending on which regions/time-periods were selected, and prepare for integrating Vaughn's AMDS client so that data can be fetched.

I am hoping to get to a "rodsadai" like state (click server A, get some data, click server B, get other data, click both, get combined data) for next Friday's release.

Cheers, and have a good weekend!