iRODS User Interfaces (Clients) - Summary - Documentation

[Bernardo García]

Hi iRODS Chat People

I have been reading from a determined time about of the differents clients for perform interface and/or communication with iRODS deployments.

The iRODS people in this post talk us a bit about it:

iRODS User Interfaces - http://irods.org/post/irods-user-interfaces/#.VXn0qHXIl4u

This post I have considered important, because gave an overview about of how to the users access to iRODS, and show the differents alternatives for do it.

In this post they also says that include some information related to this topic into the official documentation in iRODS coming soon. This is great!

I would like in addition, that may be was possible include into the documentation a complete guide about of the differents iRODS clients user interfaces that exists currently, to the cronological style, mentioning clients applications like as:

- iCommands: In which I see that there is this documentation https://docs.irods.org/master/icommands/user/ - great :D

- iDrop Wev [https://github.com/DICE-UNC/idrop/wiki/Installing-iDROP-Web] and iDrop Desktop [https://github.com/DICE-UNC/idrop/wiki/iDrop-Installers]

Of iDrop, is interesting about of their user stories

https://github.com/DICE-UNC/idrop/wiki/iDrop-User-Stories

- iRODS PHP  Web client:  Downlaod from here: https://github.com/DICE-UNC/irods-php/tree/master/web 

This is some old client, but for me it has been really useful (while I have been working with iRODS 3.x.x)

Yet  in my iRODS 4.1.2 Deployment I use iRODS PHP Web client for tests (upload and retrieve dataobjects), but in this thread/post, Mike Conway share me that iRODS PHP Web client it's not supported and it's possible that those use an old protocol in relation with iRODS 4.x in forward for their operation with the new features that have iRODS and the are coming. ...

- Scotty Web based administration http://irods.org/2013/03/scotty-irods-admin-interface-beta-released/

A web application that connect with any datagrid Zone. It's work on Tomcat application server and was builded using Jargon API...

What is their current state? future?

- iRODS Cloud Browser, under construction (?) 

Also in this post has been commented that will be a complete web interface for lots opf user tasks https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/irod-chat/NWuov4PXT0Y

This is the repository, 

https://github.com/DICE-UNC/irods-cloud-browser

My question is: In this moment is possible use iRODS Cloud browser? Download and install in my machine?

I also want ask to you about of this implementations:

- In that consist iRODS Fuse implementation?

- I have been hearing about of owncloud (https://owncloud.org/) as a tool for manage files via web, and possibles efforts for work with owncloud + iRODS - http://blogs.nopcode.org/brainstorm/2014/02/04/owncloud-irods-a-small-step-towards-popularizing-scientific-data-sharing/

I would like, just in case of be possible, that all this applications interfaces to iRODS mentioned above were detailed in deep into the iRODS official documentation (state of art, current status, links to install resources ... etc ..).

 Anyone of the people (include me) in the group can help to perform this in case of be necessary

THanks so much.

Best Regards

 

[Dave Powers]

Bernardo -

Thanks for your summary post.  I too am curious to see which client tools are viable solutions for us to run on iRODS 4.1.x in a production environment.  We have tried iDROP Web2 ( http://irods.org/post/idrop-web-demo/#.Vc49yHFVhBc ) with some success and we have tried irods-php ( https://github.com/DICE-UNC/irods-php ).    I don't believe either of these tools is ready to run in a production environment at scale for our end users. 

What is your ( or other iRODS users ) experience with the current client toolsets?  Are there any current iRODS clients that you would recommend that are production ready for an enterprise on running iRODS 4.1.x or would you suggest that we should just wait for the next generation of client tools to come out soon?  

Thanks!

Dave

[Mike Conway]

we are getting rid of idrop web.  We're closing in on the first release of a web based browser for DFC that should serve your needs.

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iROD-Chat: http://groups.google.com/group/iROD-Chat

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[Dave Powers]

Mike -

Thank you for the response.  We'll sit tight and look forward to that release.

Dave

[Mike Conway]

OK, Perhaps you all might be willing to do some early testing and consultation? I'd like to see what you all think in terms of 'production readiness' indicators and requirements..

MC

[Dave Powers]

Mike -

We would be willing to do some early testing and provide feedback based on our use cases and requirements.

Dave

[Stephen Worth]

Bernardo -

I apologize that I did not see this earlier.  There is another client coming this fall that may help.  EMC has been developing Metalnx, an administration and metadata UI tool for iRODS.  The goal of Metalnx is to make it easy for rodsadmins to do the day to day work of administering an iRODS system.  A second goal is to provide an intuitive UI for working with collections and metadata.  Our hope is that this tool will encourage more users to implement iRODS. 

We gave a presentation on the state of the work at the June iRODS UGM.  The slides can be found on the Consortium wed site:  https://irods.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Worth-MetaLnx.pdf 

Development on the tool continues.  We are current conducting beta tests with customers to ensure we are getting the functionality right. Our plan is to publish the work as open source during Q4 of 2015.  The tool is being developed and tested with iRODS 4.0 and 4.1.  Please check the presentation.  If this tool looks like what you are interested in please us know. 

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-4, Bernardo García wrote:

[Bernardo García]

Hi Stephen, I am currently retaking the topic and posts about of client user interfaces and I recently see your message

I bring to you too my apologizes for the delay in reply your message and helpful information that you provided me and to everyone

Metalnx look me a client interface management really helpful and cool.

Currently I am deploying iRODS 4.1.6 and I am interested in use and explore MEtalnx.

How to can I proceed about it?

Thanks a lot for you by share this information.

Best Regards

[aape...@ncsu.edu]

Hello iRods community

What are the advantages of Metalnx over CloudBrouser?

A lot has happened since this thread started, and I am hoping the community could briefly revisit the issue. My specific situation is that I have iRods v4.2.0 + CloudBrowser v1.0.1, and I am thinking about installing Metalnx to make the user interface easier or more powerful. My understanding is that one advantage of the Metalnx interface (from reading this thread) is that rodsadmin tasks are easier. What about the user interface? What is a summary of the advantages for the user?

I did look at the first 15 mins of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HwtbG5O_9M, which implied that it can harvest metadata (more easily?). My current way of harvesting metadata is to use linux scripts with commands like grep and cut, wrapped around with an irods-microservice like ?loadMetadata?

Does Metalnx make data harvesting and setting up triggering metadata actions easier?

Regards

Andrew Petersen

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-4, Bernardo García wrote:

[Stephen Worth]

Andrew,

Your question is a good one.  I will respond to what I can and hope that others will join in to add more detail and correct me where I am wrong.

Metalnx was an open source project started at EMC (now Dell EMC) to help people who wanted to more easily administer and work with iRODS via a GUI.  The goal was to create a UI that will make it easier for an average user and administrator to interact with IRODS and not need strong Linux nor programming skills to interact with the framework successfully. 

Metalnx is one of several IRODS GUIs that have been created over time. They all have different advantages.  EMC put Metalnx into open source in hopes that a user community will form over time to enhance and bring the tool forward for the common good.  Earlier this spring the source base (V1.4) was contributed to the iRODS consortia and there are several people working on enhancements on the V2.0 branch you will find in github.com/irods-contrib/metalnx-web.

In most respects, the Cloud Browser and Metalnx are very similar.   

Metalnx advantages:

- Supports many iRODS system administration tasks (user, group creation/modification, permissions, storage grid layout, iRODS grid monitoring)

- Supports user rule deployment across the nodes in an iRODS grid  (this is in V1.4)

- Allows users to give access to others via links (not tickets) to allow movement in the collection tree around blocked path permissions

- Uses Thymleaf to allow page creation on the Metalnx server so to lower the compute overhead on thin clients and provide scalability

- A version of metadata templates (public / private) which can be run over individual or collections of objects in a collection.

- Some auto extraction of metadata tags (this is not a Metalnx feature, the code was written to invoke a metadata rule on ingest based on the file suffix if a rule is in the rule base).  I believe the latest version of the Cloud Browser does similarly. 

There is work underway by members of the Metalnx Community to bring into Metalnx some of the best elements of the Cloud Browser along 

with enhanced support for metadata templates.

Cloud Browser advantages:

- WebDav support  (Metalnx does not support this)

- CSS customizations to support organizational look and feel

- Personalized collection views

- Basic metadata templates based on the metadata template model the metadata working group is adopting.

Both do important things like:

- support tickets

- allow searching for Metadata tags

- PAM support for authentication

- Collection browsing 

- Object permissions, versioning, and metadata tag viewing

- Metadata tag searching

You asked if the UI will make it easier to ingest metadata.  That depends on how the evolution of Metalnx and the cloud browser goes.  The original Metalnx team started some work in the UI to build a sophisticated metadata template engine running through the UI.  IRODS and its rule engine is a fast/powerful tool.  The work underway in the Metadata working group is moving towards automated metadata extraction being done by iRODS rules and microservices and using the iRODS framework to feed information about metadata templates to the GUI (for data consistency) keeping all this information in the ICAT for consistency.  I am not the best person to speak on the details of this. 

At the other end will be easier searching and matching.  Metalnx does metadata searching through a simple interface which lets one build a search term based on metadata tags (or wildcards), matching criteria (equal, not equal, contains, does not contain), and metadata fields (value, units) along with object property data (TLM, size, etc.).  The structure for this was based on feedback from a number of genome researchers we interviewed.  I am sure the interface can and will be improved over time, especially after more work is done integrating IRODS with strong search engines.  I know the Cloud Browser supports metadata search via the UI, but I have not used it in some time so my knowledge is old.  

Hopefully, this helps answer some of your questions. 

--
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"iRODS: the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data-management System; A community driven, open source, data grid software solution" https://www.irods.org
 
iROD-Chat: http://groups.google.com/group/iROD-Chat

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