[MOBY-l] please help - using Dashboard

[Dirk Haase]

Hi Yuying,

On Wednesday 13 September 2006 18:19, yuying at vbi.vt.edu wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I am new to the BioMoby project.

Welcome to the club!

> I am trying to set up everything on my 
> local computer and I am trying to do a testing for an Echo web service. I
> am following the guide for Java from biomoby.tigr.org. And my current step
> is to register this testing service using Dashboard. The Dashboard
> documentation did not tell me how to find out the namespace, service type,
> data types and necessary fields for registering the service. 

Generally speaking, these are the things which are specific for each new 
service, so it's hard for a general guide to help you there...  All these 
things have to be fixed at the very beginning, it only makes sense to 
register a service when you are sure about its 'signature' (ie. input and 
output datatypes/namespaces/service type). In order to get an idea of these 
concepts which are very basic for the whole biomoby thing, I would recommend 
the general documentation on biomoby.org->'For Developers'.
Data types: 
http://biomoby.open-bio.org/CVS_CONTENT/moby-live/Docs/MOBY-S_API/DataClassOntology.html
Namespaces:
http://biomoby.open-bio.org/CVS_CONTENT/moby-live/Docs/MOBY-S_API/ObjectStructure.html
Service types are not very well described, but the ones which already exist 
have quite speaking names, just browse the hierarchy and select whatever fits 
best.

For the special case of an Echo service we can of course offer you advice. To 
be a real echo, it should be able to deal with any sort of object, so it 
would be wrong to rely on any 'special feature' of an input. Thus, the input 
data type has to be just 'Object'. Same for the output, otherwise it's not an 
echo ;-) You also wouldn't want to restrict the service to objects of a 
specific namespace, so leave it blank. Consequently, the output namespace is 
also not specifyable (ie. blank). Regarding the service type 'Testing' is the 
best choice as you guessed correctly.

> My guess is 
> that the service type is testing. Could anyone tell me how to find such
> information? And if I want to use RDF, how to find out the signature URL?

The signature URL can not be 'found out', you have to specify it. Remember 
that it must be a link to a place where
a) it can be accessed from everywhere (i.e. on your publicly accessible 
webserver)
b) you have write permissions, because you have to put the RDF document to the 
place which is referenced by the signature URL

You might also have a look at 
http://bioinfo.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/araws/documentation/help/rdf-faq/
which answers the most important question concerning RDF. The parent folder 
contains more documentary stuff which could also be helpful.

> Thank you!

Hope this helps,
dirk

-- 

----------------------------------------------------------
Dirk Haase		            phone +49 89 3187 3583
http://mips.gsf.de/~haase           email   d.haase at gsf.de