[Bioclusters] Re: Announcing iNquiryXTE: A Mac OS X desktop application interface to an iNquiry cluster

[William Van Etten]

First, realize that this was simply a demonstration of the sort of  
thing that's possible having a web services API to iNquiry.
I hadn't really considered this to be something "beefy" and broadly  
capable, but I suppose it could turn into that.

Second, I sort of cheated in the development of this app, making it  
rather Pise-centric.
I ported Catherine Leotondal's PiseParser to ObjC and used it to  
parse Pise XML descriptions of the applications
being served by iNquiry's web interface. The UI and client-side web  
service calls are generated from these XML.

{Actually we do the same sort of thing in reverse on the server side  
to make the web services.}

So I guess, with a Pise description of MOBY, EBI, eUtils,
you could get these to work with zero development (apart from writing  
the XML).

A more portable development solution might have been to generate the  
UI and client-side web service calls from a WSDL.
Version 2.0.

Bill

On May 25, 2005, at 12:00 PM, bioclusters-request at bioinformatics.org  
wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> I havent had a chance to play with this yet but how hard would it be
> to add in support for other online bioinformatic web services such as
> MOBY, EBI, eUtils, etc? I've been looking at Automator and the
> webservice action they provide but its going to be a little clunky
> and hard to pull togther in such a nice interface like XTE has.
> Obviously this might conflict with your plans for iNquiry as users
> could access these services elsewhere and not necessarily need their
> own xserve system in the basement. Alternatively it might get them
> hooked on this type of approach and encourage them to get their own
> servers to speed their analyses up.
>
> The other potentially cool thing to do would be to use something like
> this as a front end for a Taverna workflow - that way you (or others)
> could use Taverna to create the workflows between the other web
> services (non-iNquiry based),then use XTE or an automator action to
> kick it off and let the taverna workflow engine do its thing behind
> the scenes. Taverna is in need of a user friendly front end and
> putting something that is *easy to use* on people's desktops would be
> a great next step and widen your audience beyond iNquiry-based users.
>
> Great to see you guys playing with this technology and getting
> something tangible out there so fast! :)
>
> Simon.
>
>
> On May 23, 2005, at 1:46 PM, William Van Etten wrote:
>
>
>
>> iNquiryXTE (X Tiger Edition) is a FREE and open source Mac OS X
>> Desktop application that functions both as a web services client to
>> an iNquiry enabled Apple Workgroup Cluster and an Automator action
>> generator.
>>
>> Take a look, kick the tires, contribute to the code.
>>
>> http://www.bioteam.net/inquiryxte/
>>
>> Bill
>> --
>> William Van Etten, PhD
>> email: bill at bioteam.net
>> office/FAX: 978-255-1506
>> mobile: 617-921-3358
>> iChat: williamvanettenphd at mac.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>

--
William Van Etten, PhD
email: bill at bioteam.net
office/FAX: 978-255-1506
mobile: 617-921-3358
iChat: williamvanettenphd at mac.com