PMR2 meeting 5/12/2011

Present: Dougal Cowan, Harvey Ho, Randall Britten, Tommy Yu, Thor Besier, Julian Eden, David "Andre" Nickerson, Hugh Sorby, Alan Wu, Gavin Flower, Avan Suinesiaputra, Poul Nielsen, Richard Christie, Tiong Lim

Apologies: Duane Malcolm, Richard Boyes

  • Randall: purpose of this meeting is to go over current PMR2 capabilites, current development goals, and to discuss the CAP project, musculoskeletal group software project, etc in relation to PMR2.
  • Poul: we are trying to achieve commonality of effort instead of disjoint projects which may replicate effort.

Information on PMR2

  • Tommy: provided general overview of the capabilities of PMR2, and the technologies on which it is built.
    • DVCS (Mercurial) to store and version control models.
    • CMS (Plone) to present, index, and search models.
  • Randall: historically PMR2 was for CellML, consisting of relatively small XML files. Currently and in the future there will be increasing desire to store large data such as simulation results and images.

Discussion on PMR2

  • Thor: is PMR2 a platform for model development, or just storage and presentation?
  • Randall & David: Although PMR2 with Mercurial has all the required features for modellers to use it for collaborative model development, these are very generic, and have not been widely adopted.
  • Richard: PMR2 should be somewhat analagous to product lifecycle management software.
  • There was a discussion of similarities between PMR2 and the CAP project.
  • Avan: it would be good if PMR2 could communicate with PACS servers. CAP is looking to replace the exist server, and could look at PMR2 for this. PhD student working on this should talk with Tommy.
  • There was a discussion about how realistic it is to try to have a single platform that works for everyone in the ABI.
  • The API and services available and planned to work directly with PMR2 were discussed. The possibility of workflow definition as part of PMR2 was raised.
  • David: tools should be separate from PMR2.
  • There was a discussion about workflows, storage, and what should be handled by tools (client software) and what by the server.
  • Thor explained the plans of the musculoskeletal group for a new modelling tool/workflow.
  • There was a discussion about a possible ABI "data archive" to prevent loss of models, workflows, information, and derivative works (videos etc).
  • Randall: during the development of the musculoskeletal group client, Tommy could develop webservices to support the required workflows.
  • There was a discussion about the problems of storing large binary data. The possibility of PMR2 referring to large files stored elsewhere (eg. in PACS servers or Data Fabric etc.) was discussed.
  • It was noted that it will be very important to discuss requirements with various groups around the ABI to determine their needs for client software and data storage.