SenseBase is designed to support distributed research centers, using modern, scalable, accessible open source components. The open source process is as important as the components. We want to be part of a community of technical and non technical users making open research and knowledge curation easier.
"Out of the box," SenseBase supports large collections of documents exposing a fantastic search engine, with accessible methods to add and organize documents (drag and drop, programmatic). The provided Web front end supports navigation, tagging and visualization. Its publish/subscribe architecture permits simplified and robust distribution of search and processing agents and immediate updates in the front-end.
Compared to similar projects, components of SenseBase were selected to enable newcomer developers to participate without having to learn a complex "stack." An annotating agent or search interface can be created in a dozen lines of Javascript.
The project will have its greatest value in constant, cohesive, supported development, recognizing the importance of supporting interoperability between annotation systems to create a smarter, next generation Web.
The general software distribution is released under AGPL terms (see COPYING), though selected components and distributions may be released under alternate terms as appropriate to support long term development.
Some may find it easier to use Docker for setup.
Install ElasticSearch (1.0+) and Node.js (tested with version 0.10). You'll optionally need the ElasticSearch carrot2 plugin for clustering.
Check out the SenseBase repo, cd to it, then npm install; npm install -g grunt-cli; npm install -g bower
create a config.js:
// set up logging
var winston = require('winston');
['debug', 'info', 'warn', 'error'].forEach(function(e) {
GLOBAL[e] = winston[e];
});
var domain = 'localhost',
namespace = '',
port = 9999,
fayemount = namespace + '/faye',
base = 'http://' + domain + (port ? ':' + port : '') + namespace;
var esOptions ={ _index : 'ps', server : { host : domain, port : 9200 }};
exports.config = {
namespace: namespace,
project: 'ps',
FAYEMOUNT: fayemount,
FAYEHOST: 'http://' + domain + (port ? ':' + port : '') + fayemount,
ESEARCH: esOptions,
ESEARCH_URI: 'http://' + esOptions.server.host + ':' + esOptions.server.port + '/' + esOptions._index,
HOMEPAGE: base + '/',
AUTH_PORT: port,
PROXY_PORT: 8089,
SPOTLIGHT: { host: domain, port: 7272},
NOCACHE_REGEX: '.*.' + domain,
CACHE_DIR : '/home/vid/pcache/',
uploadDirectory: './uploads',
doCache : true,
doAuth: true,
logStream : { write: function() {}},
apis : { <configured api keys> }
//
};
Then grunt libs. Finally, grunt clientids to initialize local-site.json and assign local authentication IDs for agents.
Launch the software standalone with node app.js (after generating assets), or just by running grunt (the default task).
If including SenseBase from your own project, you can create a bootstrap that looks like this:
var senseBase = require('SenseBase');
senseBase.start(require('./config.js').config);
Start any services independently. For example, node services/annotations/addRequest.js. Or start all 'available' services by
executing grunt services.
grunt watches code changes after starting app.js.
app.js creates a configured instance of index.js.
index.js manages front-end access and bootstraps /lib/pubsub.js
All 'team' interaction is via pubsub.js. ElasticSearch is not exposed and should be firewalled.
Annotations are nested in ContentItems (ElasticSearch versions will be used to prevent conflict). ContentItems store a checksummed history.
ContentItems initially have an state of 'visited' (or 'queued' if searching, then 'visited' when retrieved). After their first annotation and an annotationSummary is added, this becomes 'annotated.'
Everything else (aside from direct field data) is saved as an annotation.
Global configuration and services used by libraries are via the GLOBAL.config and svc objects. Tests can use this to provide mocks.
Create a configuration variable called localJS pointing to a local script which will be included on every page. To enable livereload on a development instance, use :35729/livereload.js.
SenseBase uses standalone services for annotations, retrieving searches, and other functions.
A few sample services are provided. Edit them by making them available in your local-site.json.
This project is supported by and forms the basis of http://www.github.com/TsangLab/Proxiris, as well as work developed for the PatientSense project for eHealth in Motion | Dataparc .
Uses material from NCBI. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/disclaimer.html