[BioPython] large data distribution (was: versioning, distribution and webdav)
Andrew Dalke
dalke@acm.org
Thu, 17 May 2001 02:05:27 -0600
Rune Linding <linding@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE>:
>to be short.... i think its time that we jump onto this project:
>
>http://www.eu-datagrid.org
Possibly. Problems I have with it are:
- I really didn't like the word 'grid' when I heard it a few
years back as GRiD. But then, I didn't like "www" so I'm
not the best judge of this.
- their current site is poorly designed, their new one uses
a Shockwave plugin and their brochure seems to have froze
my PDF reader. Ah, no, it's just a 4MB file it had to
suck down through my modem to read 4 pages of text. Lots
of pretty color pictures though.
- It falls in the category of Grand Projects, and I've found that
those require a lot of time, research, politics and money.
Tracking what's going on means going to a lot of meetings in
person, knowing the right contacts (which I don't have) and
reading and writing a lot of boring reports. Last time I was
involved in a Grand Project I got pretty frustrated.
- I don't think anything they are proposing would work over a
T1 line, which means I couldn't ever use it over DSL or 56K.
Actually, I can't find a solid statement of the details of
how this will work (because it's still all research) so I
could be wrong.
- Those last two together mean that I personally would have somewhere
between zero and zilch influence. Why should I get involved?
> perhaps its time for biology to raise a hand in the voting?
It does say that CNRS will work on using the grid for humane genome
exploration.
Andrew
dalke@acm.org