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Friday, December 23, 2011

LibSBML 5.3.0 Released & SBML Render Package

Just in time for Christmas we have just released LibSBML 5.3.0. The essentials are:

like for the 5.2.0 release we again provided an alternative source archive that contains updated snapshots of all currently available SBML Level 3 Packages:

SBML Rendering Package

The newest addition is a port of Ralph Gauges libSBML 4 implementation patch to the libSBML 5 package API. It supports both serialization as SBML Level 3 package and Level 2 annotation. However, there were some minor changes along the way:

  • Most changes involve the plugin API, instead of directly accessing the render information from the Layout objects, you use the plugin API:

      Model* model = doc->getModel();

    LayoutModelPlugin *plugin = (LayoutModelPlugin*) model->getPlugin ("layout");

    if (plugin == NULL || plugin->getNumLayouts() == 0)
    {
    cerr << "The loaded model contains no layout information, please add these first." << endl;
    return 3;
    }

    RenderListOfLayoutsPlugin *lolPlugin = (RenderListOfLayoutsPlugin*) plugin->getListOfLayouts()->getPlugin("render");
    if (lolPlugin != NULL && lolPlugin->getNumGlobalRenderInformationObjects() > 0)
    {
    cout << "The loaded model contains global Render information. " << endl;
    }



    the the plugin classes then have all the elements you would need. The Render Extension extends three classes:



    • ListOfLayouts: Entry point for the ListOfGlobalRenderInformation


    • Layout: Entry point for the ListOfRenderInformation


    • GraphicalObject: allows to set the role of a graphical object in order to pin a specific render style to it.




  • There also is a minor change with the way that the XML is written out. Each attribute defined in the Render specification, is written out as belonging to the “render” namespace. With one exception, while reading through the Render specification I could not find one different between the BoundingBox defined in the Layout extension and the one used by the Render LineEndings. So rather than re-implementing another BoundingBox in a different namespace, I made the LineEndings reuse the layout bounding box.



Let me know how the extension is working for you.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

SBW goes Portable

Portable Applications, are applications that you can easily take with you on your USB stick. This allows to use your applications on all Windows machines by simply plugging in the stick. I’m pleased to announce a first prototype that will make the Systems Biology Workbench available for the portableapps.com framework. Here the download:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sbw/files/sbw/portable/

To install, simply launch portable apps, and then click on “Install a new App”:

image

It will install the following applications:

image

While the launcher only exposes: JDesigner,Jarnac, JarnacLite, the Simulation Tool,  SBML Translator, SBML Layout Viewer, AutoLayout and the C# Inspector, the full SBW installation is available.

If you need custom launchers for more applications, let me know (Possible candidates: BioModels Importer, Jacobian Viewer, Convert SBML, Shutdown SBW).

Please let me know whether this is working for you.

BAD NEWS:

Unfortunately we won’t be able to have SBW be part of the Portable Apps dictionary since some SBW components use .NET and portable apps do not consider .NET widely enough spread. (Even though it appears that it was on 90% of  Windows machines in 2010, and is now part of windows update, and thus *everyone* updating their machine is likely to have it installed.) But there goes me rambling …

Sunday, November 13, 2011

New SBML Translator Application online!

As second application I’m glad to announce the new SBML Translator application:

http://sysbioapps.dyndns.org/Translator

The application is a major redesign from the basic version.  Its features:

  • multiple file upload (with drag & drop for chrome and firefox)
  • translation of files via URL
  • pasting of SBML
  • Syntax Highlighting of the result
  • downloading of translation with proper mime-type / extension

The translators have been updated to ensure that assignment rules  are sorted correctly in the translation (an issue that seems to have caused problems in the past). As soon as the SBFC project comes along I plan to include their translators as well. As always a screencast says more than words:

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

As always I’d love to hear any feedback that you have!

Saturday, November 12, 2011

libSBML 5.2.0 released

This morning Sarah sent the announcement that a new version of libSBML is available for download from:
http://sf.net/projects/sbml/files/libsbml/5.2.0/ 
New this time around is that we also provide binaries for all the SBML Level 3 Extension packages. So if you are interested in providing software support for:
  • FBC
  • COMP
  • LAYOUT
  • GROUPS
  • REQ
  • SPATIAL
you can simply download your favorite binaries (including language bindings) from the experimental directory.

New Features

There are two new features I want to bring to your attention, that is the facility for custom validators and converters. By inheriting form SBMLConverter or SBMLValidator it is now possible for your application to quickly check for specific aspects of documents that is important to you.
Here just one example on how you could check that your SBML model does not contain Algebraic Rules or Fast reactions if your application does not support them.
   1: /** 
2: * Declares a custom validator to be called. This allows you to validate
3: * any aspect of an SBML Model that you want to be notified about. You could
4: * use this to notify your application that a model contains an unsupported
5: * feature of SBML (either as warning).
6: *
7: * In this example the validator will go through the model and test for the
8: * presence of 'fast' reactions and algebraic rules. If either is used a
9: * warning will be added to the error log.
10: */
11: class MyCustomValidator : public SBMLValidator
12: {
13: public:
14: MyCustomValidator() : SBMLValidator() {}
15: MyCustomValidator(const MyCustomValidator& orig) : SBMLValidator(orig) {
16: 
17: }
18: virtual ~MyCustomValidator() {}
19: 
20: virtual SBMLValidator* clone() const { return new MyCustomValidator(*this); }
21: 
22: virtual unsigned int validate() {
23: // if we don't have a model we don't apply this validator.
24: if (getDocument() == NULL || getModel() == NULL)
25: return 0;
26: 
27: // if we have no rules and reactions we don't apply this validator either
28: if (getModel()->getNumReactions() == 0 && getModel()->getNumRules() == 0)
29: return 0;
30: 
31: unsigned int numErrors = 0;
32: // test for algebraic rules
33: for (unsigned int i = 0; i < getModel()->getNumRules(); i++)
34: {
35: if (getModel()->getRule(i)->getTypeCode() == SBML_ALGEBRAIC_RULE) {
36:
37: getErrorLog()->add(SBMLError(99999, 3, 1,
38: "This model uses algebraic rules, however this application does not support them.",
39: 0, 0,
40: LIBSBML_SEV_WARNING, // or LIBSBML_SEV_ERROR if you want to stop
41: LIBSBML_CAT_SBML // or whatever category you prefer
42: ));
43:
44: numErrors++;
45: }
46: }
47: 
48: // test for fast reactions
49: for (unsigned int i = 0; i < getModel()->getNumReactions(); i++)
50: {
51: // test whether value is set, and true
52: if (getModel()->getReaction(i)->isSetFast() &&
53: getModel()->getReaction(i)->getFast()) {
54: 
55: getErrorLog()->add(SBMLError(99999, 3, 1,
56: "This model uses fast reactions, however this application does not support them.",
57: 0, 0,
58: LIBSBML_SEV_WARNING, // or LIBSBML_SEV_ERROR if you want to stop
59: LIBSBML_CAT_SBML // or whatever category you prefer
60: ));
61: 
62: numErrors++;
63: 
64: }
65: }
66: 
67: return numErrors;
68: }
69: 
70:
71: };
72: 
73: 
74: int
75: main (int argc, char *argv[])
76: {
77: if (argc != 2)
78: {
79: cout << endl << "Usage: addCustomValidator filename" << endl << endl;
80: return 1;
81: }
82:
83: const char* filename = argv[1];
84: 
85: // read the file name
86: SBMLDocument* document = readSBML(filename);
87: 
88: // add a custom validator
89: document->addValidator(new MyCustomValidator());
90: 
91: // check consistency like before
92: int numErrors = document->checkConsistency();
93: 
94: // print errors and warnings
95: document->printErrors();
96: 
97: // return number of errors
98: return numErrors;
99: 
100: }


Linux Packages

For this release we provide again DEB and RPM files with binaries compiled on CentOS 4.6 and Ubuntu 8. This means they use a libc version that is reasonably old and will not cause problems on newer distributions.

Listening to feedback from our users the default install prefix has been changed to /usr. And we also include language bindings in them.

The plan was to use the OpenBuildService (OBS),  but unfortunately I was not yet able to create binaries with language bindings for all different distributions. I hope we can sort this out for the next release.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Introducing sysbioapps/Layout

Ever since the SBW applications have been pulled from sys-bio.org and are only available via IP I am working on a new version for each of these applications. Today I’ve made the new version of my Layout web application available:

http://sysbioapps.dyndns.org/Layout 

See it live:

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Features

The new application has the same basic features as the old one:

  • upload of an SBML file
  • displaying SBML Layout / SBML Render Format
  • displaying JDesigner / JDesigner 2 / CellDesigner annotation
  • generating a layout
  • exporting images / SVG / PDF

New in this version:

  • multiple file support
  • Chrome / Firefox: upload multiple files
  • Chrome / Firefox: drag and drop files onto the web site to upload
  • support for SBGN-ML

Implementation

The new version has been implemented using ASP.NET MVC3  and JQuery / JQueryUI. The actual heavy lifting is performed by the SBML Layout Library. The PDF export is made possible through sbml2tikz, followed by a compilation by pdflatex.

As always any feedback is welcome.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

SED-ML Web Tools & KISAO

SED-ML uses KISAO to annotate simulation algorithms with information of what kind of simulation should be performed. Until today the SED-ML Web Tools only displayed the term identifier. This has changed, now the terms will be resolved and displayed:

SED-ML-Web

To make this work I’ve modified LibSedML to resolve all KISAO terms found. This is now part of the Algorithm object, and can be accessed through the Term property.

Unfortunately KISAO is now only available in OWL format. This means people have to ‘reason’ over the document in order to find out even the most basic things. While the EBI provides a ‘libKISAO’, this library is only available for Java. 

In the end I’ve decided to convert the OWL file periodically in a more readable format:

 <term id='KISAO:0000377' 
name='one-step method'>
<definition> <![CDATA[A numerical method
for differential equations which uses one
starting value at each step.]]>
</definition>

<similarTo>KISAO:0000020</similarTo>
...
<similarTo>KISAO:0000031</similarTo>




<ancestor>KISAO:0000000</ancestor>

<descendent>KISAO:0000261</descendent>
<descendent>KISAO:0000380</descendent>
<descendent>KISAO:0000064</descendent>
<descendent>KISAO:0000286</descendent>
</term>


I will update that file periodically and have it compiled into libSedML, if you would like to have a look at it, you can access it here:



kisao.xml

Friday, October 7, 2011

sys-bio.org web applications down

The web site of the Saurolab was moved to a different machine the domain sys-bio.org has been transferred to that machine. As a result, all applications that previously ran on sys-bio.org are no longer available via their old URLs. The old server is still available via its IP:

http://128.208.17.26/

That web site also still hosts the web applications:

In the coming weeks I will update these applications and move them over to http://sysbioapps.dyndns.org.

SBW Logo (short)-transparent