Gooogle Summer of Code Taverna projects

[alaninmcr <al...@googlemail.com>]

Hello everybody,

The Apache Software Foundation has been accepted as a mentoring 
organization for the 2015 Google Summer of Code[1]. The full list of 
Apache GSOC projects[2] includes four Taverna-related projects[3] : a 
production-suitable command line tool, a databundle viewer, OGC WPS 
support and an Android App for Taverna.

A production-suitable command line tool [4]
=======================================

This proposed GSOC project is to formalize the command line interface 
for Taverna Language so that it can achieve some of the below:

a) In collaboration with dev@taverna and the mentor, define command line 
options for workflow conversions and inspection
b) Find and use an appropriate command line parser library
c) --help
d) Basic error handling (e.g. file not found)
e) Batch processing - e.g. recursive conversions
f) Arguments for choosing input and output formats
g) Unit and Integration Tests for the above (ideally through Maven)
The project can be extended by exposing other parts of the API that 
don't currently have a command line equivalent, e.g.
h) Workflow validation
i) Workflow statistics (number of processors, links, etc)

A databundle viewer [5]
===================

This GSOC project proposes to create a web-based presentation (but not 
edit) of a workflow run, e.g. the following user story:

1) User uploads the databundle file for a workflow run (or provides the 
URI to one existing elsewhere) into the presentation system
2) The presentation system shows basic information about the workflow run
3) User navigates to inputs/outputs
4) The presentation system presents a list of inputs or outputs - 
embedding images etc. where possible, download links for large files, 
inline for small text, etc
5) User downloads a selected data file

Metadata provided can be presented in many different ways, for instance:

a) Which workflow was executed?
b) Which steps were executed?
c) What step produced this value?
d) What values were produced by this step?
e) What steps used this value?

OGC WPS support [6]
===============

This proposed GSOC project is to, in collaboration with dev@taverna and 
the mentor

(a) Improve/complete the existing Taverna 2.5 WPS prototype support
	Discovery of WPS services from a user-specified WPS server
	Configuration of WPS services
	Execution of WPS services
(b) Test WPS support using pre-selected WPS servers and services
(c) Migrate the WPS support to the Taverna 3 codebase
(c) Document the Taverna 3 WPS service support

An Android App for Taverna [7]
==========================

The project would be to:

Extend and complete Taverna Mobile: an Android app to run Taverna
workflows available on myExperiment (http://www.myexperiment.org)
using Taverna Server.

1) fix the ssl/https parts and use the latest version of taverna server
2) update the code to remove some legacy dependencies and use the
latest APIs
3) improve the UI and responsiveness

============================

If you, or any students you know, are interested in these or any other 
Taverna projects, then please discuss ideas on the Taverna developers' 
list dev@taverna.incubator.apache.org and then submit proposals to 
Google by 27th March. More information is in the GSOC 2015 FAQ [8]

Alan

[1] https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015
[2] http://bit.ly/1BCUgjU
[3] http://bit.ly/1EebXXp
[4] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-120
[5] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-121
[6] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-122
[7] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-123
[8] 
https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2015/help_page