[seek-dev] meeting with David Stockweel this morning

[Bing Zhu]

Raja and Ecogrid colleagues,

I had a quick meeting with David this morning to
discuss the integration of Ecogrid in Niche Modeling
framework.

For the Niche Modeling application, there is a challenge
as the Niche Modeling needs partial file transfer based on
some special programs such as 'netpbm' which is currently called
in the server side in a CGI script to get partial data
for a bounding box, cropped images, etc, from files in local disks.

This presents an interesting question for us as how can we
use our existing Ecogrid functions to fit this kind of needs.
Apparently the current 'get' and 'query' functions in Ecogrid 
don't fit this requirement. 

A temporarily quick solution would be modify the existing 'netpbm'
to use Ecogrid I/O calls to replace the local I/O calls in this
program. David will send me the code and I will look into it.

This challenge seems different from what SRB has achieved in using
data cutter to get partial image from a remote file with SRB since
it is efficient for 'netpbm' to sit in front of local file. Although 
the above mentioned quick solution solves this problem for Niche 
Modeling to use Ecogrid functions, the solution is not generic. A better 
solution would be an one which can be also used by other similar SEEK 
applications without modifying their individual programs such as 'netpbm'.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Bing
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Bing Zhu
Programmer/Analyst III
San Diego Supercomputer Center
(858)534-8373
bzhu at sdsc.edu
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