[Myexperiment-discuss] Re: DropBox support on myExperiment

[Jiten Bhagat]

Hi Marco,

Integrating with DropBox is a great idea, and I think it could 
definitely address shortcomings if done seamlessly (which is the tricky 
bit).

In one particular case I can imagine a pack being a synchronised view 
over a DropBox directory or a zip file within a DropBox.

DropBox could even be used for bulk uploads and new pack creations!

A few things we would need to consider at the moment:
- DropBox don't have a public web API just yet even though they have 
been promising it for a good few months now [1]. Though you could just 
treat the filesystem as the API (ie: the "My DropBox" folder). One 
solution is to develop a desktop client to monitor and take action on a 
user's "My DropBox" folder via the myExperiment API (this would then be 
a solution for any filesystem, not just DropBox). Alternatively, we 
could use a DropBox shared folder specifically for "myExperiment" stuff 
which the myExperiment people administrate and control (see issues with 
this below). Another alternative is to have individual users share their 
folders with the myExperiment DropBox "user" which we then have synced 
on our servers and take action on, such as to expose as Packs. For the 
latter option, linking the DropBox user to the myExperiment user is vital.
- The current shared folders mechanism in DropBox is a bit problematic 
for cases where people share things where only a subset of those things 
are relevant to any one person. This is because if I share a folder with 
you and I have 10GB of files in it, you would then need to have 10GB 
available on your DropBox account as well. This might not be an issue 
for myExperiment though! DropBox are also working on proper group 
accounts, which sound like they could be hugely useful (imagine linking 
a myExperiment group to a DropBox group account).
- Mixing DropBox authorisation (public / private / shared folders) with 
myExperiment authorisation (fine grained) could become tricky, 
especially when it comes to working with people's identities. This is 
where a DropBox API that has proper user and access management would 
help tremendously.

The Condor-DropBox thing Dave mentioned (by Ian) looks very cool! It 
would interesting to find out how it was done (I'm assuming they used 
the DropBox Linux command line client and/or monitored the "My DropBox" 
folder) and how they handled access permission. It's an impressive 
glimpse into what is possible with DropBox.

[1] - requests for public APIs have been made a few times on their 
forums (check out: 
<http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=9089&replies=13> and 
<http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=9767&replies=10>) and they 
even have this: http://code.google.com/p/dropbox-api/

Cheers,
Jits


Marco Roos wrote:
> Hello Jits et al.,
>
> Just a thought...
> I'm at a portal workshop in Edinburgh where myExperiment came up in a 
> discussion. A claim was made that myExperiment was not entirely 
> appropriate for a certain problem because it doesn't store data 
> directly. I was wondering if DropBox <http://getdropbox.com>, to which 
> you kindly invited me, could address this 'shortcoming'. Could it 
> provide a more powerful way to link in data than simply adding a 
> reference to some server location in a pack? I imagine it could be 
> extra interesting if DropBox would have an API of some kind that would 
> allow myExperiment to do more interesting things with data in a 
> DropBox (or other clients via myExperiment). What do you (or others) 
> think?
>
> Thanks,
> Marco.
>
>
> --
> Marco Roos (PhD) <http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.roos1>
> BioSemantics group, Human Genetics department, Leiden University 
> Medical Centre
> and Adaptive Information Disclosure group 
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