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Second annual OPTICON report
We need to submit our second annual report to OPTICON by early February 2006. PG will do this by end of January.
Minutes for third face-to-face meeting
The minutes are now available. Please check them, correct any errors and add what has been forgotten
Towards defining interface specifications
UML description of interfaces - Umbrello, Magic Draw or what other tool
There was not much activity last month but it is important that we soon starts on the interface definition at least in its most basic form. Three options could be considered, namely: a pure text description, a formal IDL specification and a UML definition. DT felt that all three were required in the end.
Both text and IDL definitions are easy to exchange as they are based on simple ASCII file.
For UML it's more complex to exchange specifications. Although there is an 'xmi' XML based exchange format, it does not always transfer all information. Also there is an issue on which UML version to take 1.4 of 2.0. A list of potential tools for UML is:
Umbrello which is free, open source. It supports 1.4 and is available under KDE.
Magic Draw is a commercial tool using UML 2.0. Although it's commercial, there is a free community version. It is written in Java.
ArgoUML a free, open source tool supporting UML 1.3/1.4 and written in Java.
Eclipse plug-ins are also available
Event hough it's not mandatory to use the same tool for UML it would make exchange easier if not too many are used. It would be good if people could look on them so that we could have a more detailed discussion at next phone meeting.
When considering to make proto-types, it would be good to use a simple, free, available software bus system. Two systems were briefly discussed
ICE is made by a commercial company but is available under a reasonable free license. It offers almost what CORBA does but is significant simpler. DT had looked into it and found is a good compromise between complexity and capabilities.
Dbus is an open source project may is more aimed towards desktop systems. It is well integrated on most Linux platforms and used by GNOME and KDE. It's small but is more limited than full scale distributed Object systems.
It may be good to have proto-types which use different bus systems to verify that interfaces are independent.
MU mentioned that SAMPO was implementing a container for ESO CPL pipeline task. They use the TAVERNA system to define the work-flow but will not look on integrating into a execution framework at this moment.
BG had discussions with ChristianSurace on a possible proto-type. A plan is likely to be made in early 2006.
DT asked for some more information on the TAVERNA work-flow system used by SAMPO. MU gave a more elaborate description. TAVERNA supports both GRID computing and Web Services. Since SAMPO will run tasks written for the ESO CPL, they currently use a Java JNI binding. This sometimes gives problems as errors in the C code may abort the JVM. A more stable solution is considered.
The problems with the ActionList were resolved and it should work again.