As to the merits of a web application:

1. It is easier to serve JSON containing ILLUSTRATE data than it is to draw
primitives in swing. Pages can be served with a lightweight web server.
This server could get access to data from a modified Pig/Grunt in JSON
format, or simply parse Grunt's output using the 'tee' command.

Once the JSON is out of Grunt, there are numerous diagramming libraries for
web applications, such as WireIT <http://neyric.github.com/wireit/> (great
example here for XProc <http://feedscape.appspot.com/>), or you can roll
your own using d3.js or Raphael.js for drawing and something like
jGraphViz<http://jgraphviz.sourceforge.net/>for layout.  You seem to
be familiar with them, and that is great!

2. I agree a web app has more potential.  We want the ILLUSTRATE diagram
feature picked up by Elastic
MapReduce<http://aws.amazon.com/elasticmapreduce/>and Mortar
Data <http://mortardata.com/#!/easy_hadoop>.

3. I agree that many more people will be thrilled to work on a web app than
a Swing or Eclipse application. See: PigPen.


As to the proposal, I have this feedback:

I would focus on the functionality demonstrated in Figure 1 of the PigPen
SIGMOD paper <http://research.yahoo.com/files/paper_5.pdf>: the
visualization of data-flows.  There are enough issues with ILLUSTRATE
itself and getting the presentation right that this is a lot of work.  For
instance, when records are long or complex... there is meaty work to
getting the presentation/visualization done well.  It will be fun!

If you do go for a full-blown IDE, I suggest you do it as a stretch goal.
In doing so, we should be cognizant of the work Mortar Data is doing in
this area. You might try coordinating with them if that is possible.  Be
aware that this is a large project.

There are existing javascript IDEs such as Cloud 9 <http://c9.io/>
(source<https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9>)
you can use as a starting point for an in-browser editor. You could plug-in
your ILLUSTRATE functionality to something like this.


I would encourage you to re-scope your proposal to focus on developing an
in-browser visualization of illustrate - with sample records, and then
after it stands on its own on integrating with an existing editor like
cloud9.

I apologize for the delay in my response, and I am excited about this
project and look forward to helping!

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 2:04 AM, manu [ranga] <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
> Thanks for the replies and feedback.
> I was not aware of the mentor situation. I hope that can be resolved.
> I have made the proposal public, so you should able to see it without
> registration [1].
>
>
>
> @Daniel, in reply to melange comment
> Reason why I am suggesting doing a web interface, instead of including
> a command like “explain -script 111.pig -graphics” :-
>
>
>  1.If we make a new java swing window pop up and show the plan
> diagram, users who are using it via remote accesses (SSH) will have to
> go through extra trouble to use it.
>
>  2. It will be easier to integrate to a web site of a cloud service
> provider (e.g.:- can be exposed via amazon’s web console).
>
>  3. Room for feature expansions. This web UI can be extended to
> show other important information. For example one can add a side bar
> showing structure of the working hadoop file system (much like
> NERDtree).
>
>
>
> Should I modify the proposal by adding a section on comparison of java
> GUI approach and web approach?
> Thanks, and feedback is much appreciated.
>
> [1]
> http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/manuranga/5002
> --
> by,
>             Manu
> (R Chathura Manuranga Perera)
>



-- 
Russell Jurney twitter.com/rjurney [email protected] datasyndrome.com

Reply via email to