[Pipet Devel] another draft of struct

Brad Chapman chapmanb at arches.uga.edu
Sat Jan 15 13:27:42 EST 2000


>    back/                          (back-endware)
>        public/                    (publicly accessible directory)
>            lib/                   (public components)
>                modules/           (public python bindings to files)
>                pixmaps/           (public graphics)
>                    icons/         (icons)
>            container/             (public files and symlinks)
>        private/                   (privately accessible directory)
>            lib/                   (private components)
>                modules/           (private python bindings to files)
>                pixmaps/           (private graphics)
>                    icons/         (icons)
>            container/             (private files and symlinks)

Hey all. I just had a random thought on the private versus public program
loci issue (sorry that it is so late into the design of the directory
structure). What I was thinking is that maybe public versus private isn't
specific enough for setting loci/program availability.
	For a bioinformatics example, you might have a database of
information that hasn't been published, but that you would like to share
with your collaborators. Or similary, you might have a program you are
developing that isn't bug free, but you would like some of your friends who
use Loci to help try out for you. Then you wouldn't want it to be publicly
accessable, for fear that some evil crackers would try to crash your system
using an undiscovered bug, but would like to let it be used by a restricted
number of people.
	Okay, so I thought up a way to try and make this possible:

1. When a program is being ported to Loci, it will need to have some kind
of Loci specific file describing it, like the meta-data files of Applab or
the *.acd (I think--don't really know much about EMBOSS, sorry if I'm
wrong!) files for EMBOSS. This file will likely be in XML like everything
else and have info about the program including the widgets it wants,
command line options, etc. Well, why not have an additional line that
specifies something like:

<availability>public</availability>

In this way the loci users could set a locus to have specific availability,
such as a group of collaborators on a project, ie.

<availability>top_secret_HIV_project</availability>

2. When a remote user connects to another computer, they will need to
authenticate themselves (through CORBA authentication stuff, I assume) with
a
name and password (if they are not registering as a public guest).

3. Then when a remote user asks the Loci program for a list of available
programs/databases/etc. they will be passed all available loci. So if I
logged in as guest, I would only see the publically available loci, while
if I logged in under a user name and was put into the
top_secret_HIV_project group, I would see publically available loci and the
top_secret_HIV_project specific loci.

So what does everyone think? Stupid idea? Good idea?
Have-you-been-up-for-six-days-straight-doing-nothing-but-smoking-crack idea?


Brad






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