[MOBY-dev] Dead services and how to figure them out

[Paul Gordon]

Hi all,

I'll respond to several posts at once:

1. There is a list of dead services at Moby Central, but it is not used 
by default in the jMoby API, and it's not part of the formal API. 
http://moby.ucalgary.ca/moby/ValidateService. Eddie, should it be?
2. There is a mechanism to flag services in MobyService, but it does not 
do the checking itself.  For an example of ping checking and flagging 
based on the aforementioned URL, see 
ca.ucalgary.seahawk.services.MobyClient and search for "MobyService.ALIVE".
3. We decided at the Hackathon in February to introduce service test 
cases in the service metadata (retrievable by LSID resolution), but I'm 
not sure if that made it into the documentation.  Mark?  I'll add 
support for this jMoby if someone points me to the docs.

Cheers,

Paul

M4o at gmx.de wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In my opinion there are about three or more questions we should think of:
>
> 1. Who should test the Services?
> 2. Who should host the Deadservices list?
> 3. How the should the Services be test. Only with the Empty Moby "Ping" or should there be some real example Data. In the Last months i worked with the Moby Services often Services respond to an Moby "Ping" but doesn’t Work correctly due to DB Connection, or Configuration Errors. (Like a lot of the mips.gsf.de) .
> 3a. Maybe a central system or Mailing list where User could comment the Function of the Services or "complain" about the misuse of Datatypes would be useful (for the Users ;-) ) Sure every user could email the problem to the Authority but I think it would be helpful to centralize the comments.
> 4. How could the Perl and Java API access the Dead list and use the Informations.
>
> My small suggestions:
> 1 and 2. The best and less traffic way would it be if the MOBY Central test the Services keeps the list.
>
> 3. If it is to complicated to test the Services with real example Data then there should be a system to complain about the service and add it to the dead list if it is not working correctly (like db connections errors for about a week).
>
> 4. There are already Methods in the jMoby Api which could be extended if there is a reliabil Dead Servcies List.
>
> In my Opinion, the reliability and Quality of the MOBY Services in the NON Testing MOBY Central should be more important then the quantity. 
> Because if a user doesn’t find a Service that does what he wants he maybe set up one by himself. But if there are a few services that should does what he wants but are non working that’s frustrating.
>
> But these are just my 2 cents. 
>
> Thanks for all the (fish) work you have done.
>
> Moritz
>
>
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>   
>> Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:29:27 +0200
>> Von: Sebastien Carrere <Sebastien.Carrere at toulouse.inra.fr>
>> An: Core developer announcements <moby-dev at lists.open-bio.org>
>> Betreff: Re: [MOBY-dev] Dead services and how to figure them out
>>     
>
>   
>> Bonjour ,
>>
>>
>> Thanks Andreas to restart the discussion about DeadServices and cleaning 
>> the registry.
>> I encounter the same problem in Remora.
>> The DeadServices list provided  is not exhaustive as you say.
>>
>> I launch every night a cleaner which do this thing:
>> - get all services registered in Mobycentral
>> - try to execute them with the perl command: eval 
>> {$service_instance->execute(XMLinputlist =>[[]])};
>>
>> Here is my list of Dead services (Ihave got also list for the 3 past 
>> days for testRegistry and Inab registry) :
>> http://lipm-bioinfo.toulouse.inra.fr/remora/sessions/blacklist.mobycentral
>>
>> (Format is "service_name    auth_uri    registry_name    error_message")
>>
>> Most of them are 404 or 500 errors.
>>
>> If my test is correct, that means that around 10% of services are dead.
>> And here I cannot test if the returned message is well-formed (many 
>> changes happened since the birth of BioMOBY and maybe some services have 
>> not been updated), so it's at least 10%...
>>
>>  From my point of view, this problem of dead/non-functionnal  services 
>> is really a critical one.
>> We develop tools based on web-services and we advice our users to use 
>> tools such as Taverna, Remora etc...
>> So if the basis (web-services) is not robust, we lost all our credibility.
>>
>> We deploy here (Toulouse, France) procedures to test our services every 
>> night to ensure their availablity and stability.
>> I think it's time to currate the main registry.
>>
>> What do you think about this ?
>>
>> Sebastien
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Andreas Groscurth wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> just a short question about dead services.
>>> I call some services with my aggregator, which are registered at the 
>>> production central. Some of them always return and error and therefore 
>>> arent useable at all.
>>>
>>> E.g. getAREXGFPImageCollection from arexdb.org
>>>
>>> if i ping it in dashboard it tells me "getAREXGFPImageCollection is 
>>> dead" - but on the "dead service" page it is not listed (and its dead 
>>> for a longer time)
>>>
>>> Also in the Java code in MobyService there are flags for the status of 
>>> a service - but how to i find them out - after a findService call all 
>>> service i retrieve have status 0 (unchecked).
>>>
>>> So my questions/comment:
>>>
>>> 1. The dead service page does not show up all dead services.
>>> 2. How do I find out with JMoby if a service is dead ?
>>>
>>> THX
>>> Andreas
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> MOBY-dev mailing list
>>> MOBY-dev at lists.open-bio.org
>>> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/moby-dev
>>>       
>
>