[DAS] Couldn't instantiate datasource ensembl1834_bridge

[Steven Van Vooren]

Dear DAS-list,

I want to serve textual annotations (from a text mining process) on clones on the human genome, and visualise these in the Ensembl genome browser web site (by entering the url to my own DAS source). For this, I am trying to install and configure a DAS server. I understand that all I need is an "annotation server" and that I should use the ensembl DAS servlet.sanger.ac.uk:8080/das as "reference server" somehow.

However, from the documentation at http://www.ensembl.org/Docs/das_server_v1.2.pdf and the docs on http://www.biojava.org/dazzle/ I gather that I should configure kaka.sanger.ac.uk as a data source for the reference server. 

Anyhow, after adapting the example configuration XML according to the pdf documentation, I get the following error message:

[11:52:47.156] DazzleServerMain: init
[11:52:47.172] org.biojava.servlets.dazzle.DazzleServlet: Error initializing installation
[11:52:47.172] org.biojava.servlets.dazzle.datasource.DataSourceException: Couldn't instantiate datasource ensembl1834_bridge
[11:52:47.172]  at org.biojava.servlets.dazzle.datasource.BasicDazzleInstallation.initResource(BasicDazzleInstallation.java:138)
...

I'm using most recent Resin and mySQL versions. As compiling the 0.99 version from the CVS repository failed, I am using the Dazzle "dazzle-webapp-skeleton-0.95" (downloaded from http://www.biojava.org/download/dazzle/). I have pasted my configuration file below. 

a) Can anyone on this list tell me what is wrong with these configuration settings? Any help would be greatly appreciated (good Karma will follow).
b) Also, is this the right way of doing things (to try to configure data bridges), or does it suffice to define a "mapmaster" pointing to the servlet.sanger.ac.uk:8080/das reference server? If so, how should I configure this?

-- config file below --

<dazzle xmlns="http://www.biojava.org/2000/dazzle">

<!-- Human data bridge -->
<resource id="ensembl1834_bridge" jclass="ensembl.EnsemblHolder">
<string name="dbURL" value="jdbc:mysql://kaka.sanger.ac.uk/homo_sapiens_core_18_34" />   (also tried 19_34a/b)
<string name="dbUser" value="anonymous" />
<string name="dbPass" value="" />
<int name="schemaVersion" value="18" /> (tried this)
<int name="schemaVersion" value="18.34" />  (and this)
<int name="schemaVersion" value="1834" />  (and this)
</resource>

<!-- Human Core data source -->
<datasource id="ensembl1834" jclass="ensembl.EnsemblReferenceSource">
<string name="ensemblHolderID" value="ensembl1834_bridge" />
<string name="name" value="Ensembl 18_34" />
<string name="description" value="Human Ensembl 1834" />
<string name="version" value="18.34" />
<set name="elideTypes">
<string value="repeat" />
<string value="similarity" />
</set>
<string name="stylesheet" value="ensemblbase-style.xml" />
</datasource>

<!-- My annotations from mySQL -->
<datasource id="MyDataSource" jclass="ensembl.EnsemblGenericSeqFeatureSource">
<string name="ensemblHolderID" value="ensembl1834_bridge" />
<string name="name" value="Ensembl Test Source" />
<string name="description" value="My DAS feature source" />
<string name="version" value="1.00" />
<string name="mapMaster" value="http://servlet.sanger.ac.uk:8080/das/ensembl1834" />
<string name="dbURL" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/ensembl_generic" />
<string name="dbUser" value="ensembluser" />
<string name="dbPass" value="********" />
<string name="tableName" value="my_feature" />
<string name="stylesheet" value="generic-style.xml" />
</datasource>

</dazzle>

Thank you,
Steven