[GSoC 2015] Data Federation / Integration Tools

Organization: Biomedical Informatics, Emory University

Project Mentor: Ashish Sharma

Short description:

Medical image archives consists of heterogeneous data sources. Multiple datasources and databases store the medical images, which need to be federated and integrated for more complex use case scenarios. The data consumer should be able to federate interesting data across diverse data sets without knowing much about the information model of the different data sources. Future work identified in the last GSoC should be implemented and the platform should be integrated with the current work.

Project Proposal

[GSoC 2014] Data Replication / Synchronization Tools

Organization: Biomedical Informatics, Emory University

Project Mentor: Ashish Sharma

Short description: Consumers download the data by searching the image repository using the browser. The information that the consumer is interested in, gets updated whenever the data producers update or add patient information. The current download tool lacks the ability to track the relevant updates to the consumer. A pub-sub solution based on Apache CXF, utilizing the JAX-RS REST API of CXF will assist automated downloads to the consumers.

Project Proposal

I am happy to be back wearing the student hat in the GSoC after a long time, with the transition of Student (AbiWord) -> Student (OMII-UK) -> Mentor (AbiWord) -> Mentor (AbiWord) -> Mentor (AbiWord) -> Student (BMI-CCI). Interestingly, this is the 10th GSoC, and the 6th Google Summer of Code that I am involved in. This is also my 3rd time as a student, and the first time ending up in the de-duplication, with Freenet and Emory BMI, where both of them are two awesome project communities. My thanks goes to the mentors and developers from both organizations. Hope I will be able to work with Freenet in the upcoming years, as I could work with only one organization in a summer. I have already started playing with Freenet, as a side effect of the GSoC. :-)

I will probably keep this blog updated with information related to the GSoC 2014. My sincere thanks goes to my supervisor Prof. Luis Veiga for his continuous motivation, and also for encouraging me in GSoC. My thanks also goes to OGSA-DAI mentors and developers from the EPCC at the Edinburgh University, which was the first university affiliated lab that I worked with, for a GSoC. I loved that experience. I loved being with AbiWord as a student and as a mentor. This year, AbiWord chose not to participate in the GSoC, after its successful participation since 2006 to 2013.

[GSoC 2010] Alternative Presentation Layer for OGSA-DAI

Having the vision of sharing data resources to enable collaboration, Open Grid Services Architecture Data Access and Integration (OGSA-DAI) provides access, transformation, integration, and delivery of data. It supports Apache Axis 1.4 and Globus Toolkit (gt-4.2), available to download for both the two platforms.
 
Under Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII-UK), an alternative presentation layer using Apache CXF instead of the outdated Axis which is currently used, is discussed as a project for Google Summer of Codes 2010, which I found very interesting for this summer.  

Project Proposal

Project Mentor: Ally Hume

OGSA-DAI has a layered architecture consists of the data layer, business logic layer, presentation layer, and client layer, when considering the architecture in bottom-up. Presentation layer encapsulates the required functionalities to expose the data service resources using the web service interfaces. Presentation layer currently consists of two realization, where each of them have  a WSDL that describes the interface. 

Both the realizations are compliant with Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF), and communicate with the respective client stubs using SOAP over HTTP. Hence design and implementation of an alternative RESTful presentation layer using CXF JAX-RS (The Java API for RESTful Web Services) is also included in this project, as it will be lightweight and best for bespoke clients.

This seems an interesting initiative as the performance and the simplicity will be highly improved. I have seen reasonable comparison of Axis 2 and CXF [1], [2], though they must be outdated by this time.

[1] Technical Notes on OGSA-DAI
[2] Resource on writing a presentation layer
[3] OGSA-DAI Tutorial
[4] FAQ: OGSA-DAI WSI-specific (Based on Axis 1.4 web service stack)
[5] FAQ: OGSA-DAI WSRF-specific (Based on the globus toolkit)
[6] General FAQ
[7] Known Problems
[8] Binary Transfer Benchmarks 
[9] GSoC 2010 Announcement in OGSA-DAI blog
[10] Google Summer of Code 2010 site

[GSoC 2009] Port AbiWord for Windows to Unicode

It's very nice to see me got selected for GSoC2009. And Abiword is one of the world's best and dedicated Open Source Organizations. I feel really honoured to join the Abi Team. 5 GSoC applicants have been selected for Abiword this time too, as usual (This was the case for the last 3 years).

My Project : Port AbiWord for Windows to Unicode

Project Proposal

Mentor : Mr.Dominic Lachowicz


List of Selected students for Abiword can be found here.

It's great to have a chance of getting a task that we prefer personally. GSoC offers us this opportunity. At this time, I have to consider more on my upcoming schedule and I will be following my project proposal time line for that.

I have to mention the great help offered to me during March and April by the Abiword developers. sum1, Robert Staudinger, Dominic Lachowicz, and Jordi Mas were always providing help and guidelines, whenever required, encouraging me and the other applicants.

Congratz to all my friends from University of Moratuwa who got selected for GSoC2009 and all the selected applicants for Abiword.

Awaiting an exciting summer!
Thank you.