[seul-sci] GAM

["Danilo Gonzalez Hashimoto" <dgh.sushi@uol.com.br>]

Ok, let's see that in a deeper way...

	Managing Data: what kind of data do you use? Here, the most usual is ".DAT" files. These are points of a graph. Some of these files have column titles, analisis parameters and sample id. The other most usual files are pictures(microscopy). I am not vey mature in coding, but i'd like to try some, and think writing such a data manager would be nice to it.
	The questions are: do you have any different kind of data? How do you think it should be organized to be well indexed(XML? directory listings? using current databases -- postgres, mysql -- is too much?)? Which features should it has (date, id, equipment, etc...)

	Specificity / Generality: I think that modularity is the answer here. If you have all those nice common features and allow people to conect different modules, they could make it customizable enough. I'm not any expert on it, but it's just where I think environment interaction and use of its technology enters the room:
	* Many equipments produces data in many data formats. Defining a 'Standard' file format would make it easier to exchange data betwen apps. So, people would be able to use the same program to analyse, say, poresizer data from different equipment. They would just have to make a module(script?)  wich would take their equipment data to the standard data format.
	* Most analysis require the same data and returns the same kind of data.
	I really don't know exactly how that works, but all those GNOME(Bonobo)/KDE(?) stuff would be nice here(I gues... :-). Which should be the general interfaces(logging should be here?)?

	Logging: nice. With interfaces wich are really wrappers to CLIs it would not be that difficult.

	I'd just like to spot a problem. One of the problems many projects like that have is that the user has to be sure he has every needed package before he installs it: qt, gnome, gtk, R, motiff, sci-libs, etc. What should be the better way to simplify this task? Packaging everything together? It would perhaps give much more than needed, or even trying to install old versions. Giving the links would be also an enourmous task(for webmasters and users, both).

Regars,

	danilo.


	
DANILO GONZALEZ HASHIMOTO
 
Universidade Federal de São Carlos
Bacharelado em Ciência da Computação