We intend to build a demonstration application that allows users to annotate and organise data and provenance metadata into a narrative. This will not be a full-featured lab book product but an application of other technologies in myGrid (particularly the MyGridInformationRepository and provenance MetaDataPortal) to support a real user scenario.

Our current ideas are based on discussions between PaulWatson^? and CaroleGoble^? and this page is based on an email from Paul and some rough notes from Carole. AlanRobinson has contributed a potential story board: AlansLabBookStoryBoard; there is also a version of this, AlansLabBookStoryBoardWP6, with annotations by Chris G.

From the above and from team wlakthroughs over Access Grid, we can identify some WorkbenchUseCases.

For current plans for using Taverna as the basis for LabBook see TavernaLabBook. This supercedes the NetBeansLabBook -- ChrisGreenhalgh - 30 Apr 2004

Paul's email

Carole and I spent some time in Chicago sketching out a possible design (on the back of a piece of paper that Carole took away with her - but perhaps she can't find it now!). We didn't get time to storyboard a usage scenario, but that would be a good next step.

The idea was to take a conventional paper logbook as a starting point, and devise an electronic lab-book that would extend its functionality by exploiting the information (data, provenance, annotations, workflows...) stored in the MyGridInformationRepository (MIR). Paper log-books allow free-text commentary by the scientists, and this would be retained in the electronic version, but it could be augmented in several ways:

1. the text could contain links to information in the MIR. This would include: data, workflows, descriptions of experiments (input, workflow, output). Right clicking on the link would bring up a menu of operations that were appropriate for the target of the link e.g. for data we may be able to view (as XML, or appropriate visualisation), graph, launch application on the data (e.g. Matlab), view provenance, annotate or share. There would also be the ability to run a workflow on the data, or search for workflows that are appropriate for this data. For example:
   • for workflows we may be able to view, run, annotate or share.
   • for experiments we could view, annotate, share, or separately access the input data, the workflow or the output.
2. the top of the window would have a menu bar that offered a set of operations that the user could carry out. For example:
   • Workflow: run or search for a workflow
   • Data: search for data (in an external repository, or the MIR, or this logbook), insert a link in the text, share the page
3. a group leader may have an extra menu item that would allow them to view and sign off (electronically) the lab-books of their group. 3rd party escrow services could be used to protect IP.

The attraction of this is that it would provide a focus for the project. It would also be a very nice demo of the myGrid capabilities. Imagine the cold carp experiment captured in an e-logbook. People could view the progress of the work by reading the text, and using the menu capabilities to view the data and workflows in detail if they were interested.

Dave DeRoure also joined in the conversation with some good ideas about extending the basic lab-book with support for collaboration. Although this is likely to be beyond the first release of a prototype, it would be worth keeping Dave in the loop as he may be able to advise or find some effort to contribute to this aspect of the design. He was also going to check with a colleague at Southampton who has an interest in this area whether or not there is any open source lab-book code available as a starting point. The other starting point is the work in Nottingham on a myGrid portal: this should provide hooks that can be used in constructing the lab-book. Chris Greenhalgh also had some ideas about the workbook and its implementation that he posted on the myGrid mail list.

As far as the MIR is concerned (I'm now avoiding the use of the term PR as it presented the wrong image), we could store the text of the logbook in there if the e-logbook contents were exported in a suitable form (XML springs to mind). This would then provide the persistence, security and searching capabilities that the logbook requires. Of course, the logbooks could also give another interesting source of information for Rob's technology to operate on.

Carole's notes

I may have misread these notes - Carole, please let me know!

Here's a possible user interface:

Story board

1. Application for bioinformaticians about their experimental process (instead of "the experiment" as a workflow)
2. Launch connections are made by tooling
3. Creating a little Perl script
   • publishing and deploying it as a service
   • local requests of my services
4. Collaborations
5. Sign-on and certificates
6. Actively using metadata (http://www.probity.org)
7. Annotating the resources and annotating the annotations...
8. Access to rest of myGrid via gateway (and portal?)
9. Drive functionality from bioinformatics scenarios

AlanRobinson has contributed a potential story board: AlansLabBookStoryBoard.

KevinsLabBookStoryBoard.

MilenasNotificationClientStoryBoard

On log in, the user lists all the available topics. -- NickSharman - 15 Nov 2002

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User can check the list of their acative subsciptions.

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By specifying topic and topicID, user subscribes.

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User can list notifications and sort them according to date, topic, context

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If user wants more detailed view of the notification, they can doubleclick on any notification...

• listNotificationsDetail1.gif:
  

A new window pops up with the details of the notification.

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