[Pipet Devel] Another XML proposal - Part 1.

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Hi Humberto!

(I think your clock is set to last Wedneday.)

Humberto Ortiz Zuazaga wrote:

> Yes, this is good.  Installing a display locus (from wherever, more on this
> later) should register the locus as able to display a certain set of DTDs, or
> an analysis locus can register the type of analysis performed and the input
> and output formats it handles.  Once registered, the workspace can find these
> locally and dispatch them immediately.

Yes.  Although it may be best that loci do not register themselves, that they
are only registered when the app broker requests registration.

> The app broker locus can also be queried at run time to find display loci or
> analysis loci meeting certain requirements.  Perhaps the workspace could ask
> the app broker to find source for a widget to display frobnicated sequences.
> This source could then be downloaded and registered locally.

I imagined that making a connection to an app broker anywhere, will allow the
registration of all accessible (and allowed) loci.

The largest of all app brokers, which I have been calling the "Hub", which is on
an Internet server and registers all other analysis app brokers on the Internet.

The local app broker, which I have been calling the "Techie" or "loci database",
resides on the user's machine and registers all analysis apps via URL (to get a
limited set of loci) or via the Hub (to get all loci on the Internet).  Now that
you mention it, Techie is really the local app broker.

There is also a CORBA broker to be made, which is local too, but the CORBA apps
are considered remote to Loci.

> I could set up my app broker to only accept source loci from "trusted"
> sources, or to only send my data to trusted analysis loci.  If I were really
> paranoid, I could turn off the app broker, and only run locally registered
> loci.

Ya, Das ist gut.

> Is the locus database different from the app broker, or can they be merged?

As mentioned above, the locus database is really the _local_ app broker.

> The trick then is how the app broker finds out about loci at remote sites.

Of course you mean command-line analysis loci (which can return a GUI).  Really,
the same way it finds out about local loci.  PAOS should make the connections
seamless, so Loci "thinks" all loci are local (with the exception of security
issues).


Jeff
-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                  mailto:bizzaro at bc.edu
Boston College Chemistry      http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Chem/Bizzaro/
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