Re: [galaxy-dev] Tabular file metadata - columns names

2013-02-22 Thread Peter Cock
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Peter Cock p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com wrote:
 Bumping one of my old queries again, with some more use-cases at the end,

 On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 http://lists.bx.psu.edu/pipermail/galaxy-dev/2011-August/006350.html
 cut

 Hi all,

 I was prompted to return to this issue after going through a fairly
 simple BLAST data analysis flow with a biology colleague - and
 being reminded just how non-obvious some of the task steps
 were [*]. Galaxy could still be much easier to use.

 Most of my protein analysis tool wrappers output tabular files,
 where column 1 is the query name, and the rest of the columns
 will be some sort of predictive model outcome or score. I do of
 course document the column meanings in the tool's help (and
 include a #header line in the output where possible), but this
 could be much more user friendly.

 A specific example is BLAST+ tabular output - where I have taken
 pains to document the columns in the tools' help text, but it would
 be much nicer to be able to annotate the columns within Galaxy's
 metadata as well. If this isn't possible in the base 'tabular' datatype,
 can it be done as a custom 'blast-tabular' datatype instead?

 ...

Based on this discussion, perhaps I do have to define a sub-format?
http://lists.bx.psu.edu/pipermail/galaxy-dev/2013-February/013526.html

Peter
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Re: [galaxy-dev] Tabular file metadata - columns names

2013-02-21 Thread Carlos Borroto
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com wrote:
 [*] This is one reason why I've just switched the default BLAST+
 output from the standard 12 column output to the extended 24
 column output in v0.0.17 of the wrappers:
 http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/devteam/ncbi_blast_plus/

Hi Peter,

Would you consider adding the option to set a custom tabular output? I
would like to be able to select exactly which fields to include. For
example the alignment data I rarely need it and if I choose 24 column
output I'll be wasting a lot of space by including it.

I'll be happy to provide patch.

And yes, I'll be very happy to be able to set custom column names in
the workflow for tabular outputs.

Regards,
Carlos
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Re: [galaxy-dev] Tabular file metadata - columns names

2013-02-21 Thread Peter Cock
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:12 PM, Carlos Borroto
carlos.borr...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com wrote:
 [*] This is one reason why I've just switched the default BLAST+
 output from the standard 12 column output to the extended 24
 column output in v0.0.17 of the wrappers:
 http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/devteam/ncbi_blast_plus/

 Hi Peter,

 Would you consider adding the option to set a custom tabular output? I
 would like to be able to select exactly which fields to include. For
 example the alignment data I rarely need it and if I choose 24 column
 output I'll be wasting a lot of space by including it.

 I'll be happy to provide patch.

 And yes, I'll be very happy to be able to set custom column names in
 the workflow for tabular outputs.

 Regards,
 Carlos

Hi Carlos,

I had deliberately avoid letting users pick the columns - it is
doable, but has two major downsides. First a more complex
GUI (if we don't allow the order to change then it is still ~24
options), and then the worse problem of it being hard to know
what the output columns are in later work. If the columns are
consistent, it is much easier to write general instructions (e.g.
for filtering on percentage identity). If Galaxy let us label the
columns on the current 'tabular' format, then I'd be more
positive about this, but until that happens I would prefer not
to offer arbitrary columns in the BLAST tabular output.

In the mean time, would you prefer I revert the default to 12
column tabular output? Just how big are your BLAST files if
the extra disk space is a serious concern (compared to raw
sequencing data)?

(Separately I was asking about how to offer automatic datatype
conversion - that would allow easy conversion of BLAST XML
or even BLAST archive ASN.1 format into tabular on demand,
making them viable default output formats from a usability point
of view - but both of those are larger than the default 12 column
or even 24 column tabular formats.)

Regards,

Peter
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Re: [galaxy-dev] Tabular file metadata - columns names

2013-02-20 Thread Peter Cock
Bumping one of my old queries again, with some more use-cases at the end,

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.c...@googlemail.com wrote:
 Bumping this old query:

 On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Peter pe...@maubp.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
 On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Peter pe...@maubp.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
 Hi all,

 I'd like to know more about Galaxy's column metadata for tabular files.
 In the workflow editor under Edit Step Actions you can pick Assign
 Columns, and then give column numbers for five predefined cases:
 Chrom, Start, End, Strand, Name.

 Do these named columns get shown anywhere in the Galaxy UI?
 For example, in a column select parameter widget?

 I've spotted some of these in the peep view (the right hand side
 history column) for interval data. Are they specific to interval data
 only, with no general mechanism available for other tabular data?

 Is it possible to assign these columns in a tool's wrapper XML file?
 From http://bitbucket.org/galaxy/galaxy-central/wiki/ToolConfigSyntax
 I'm aware of the metadata_source attribute to *copy* the meta data
 from the input file, but that isn't always relevant. Can I somehow
 specify that my tool has tabular output where column 1 is Name?

 Is it possible to introduce additional column types? e.g. evalue or
 Description.

 Thanks,

 Peter


 Peter


 Is there any mechanism for tools to set tabular files' column metadata?

 Peter

Hi all,

I was prompted to return to this issue after going through a fairly
simple BLAST data analysis flow with a biology colleague - and
being reminded just how non-obvious some of the task steps
were [*]. Galaxy could still be much easier to use.

Most of my protein analysis tool wrappers output tabular files,
where column 1 is the query name, and the rest of the columns
will be some sort of predictive model outcome or score. I do of
course document the column meanings in the tool's help (and
include a #header line in the output where possible), but this
could be much more user friendly.

A specific example is BLAST+ tabular output - where I have taken
pains to document the columns in the tools' help text, but it would
be much nicer to be able to annotate the columns within Galaxy's
metadata as well. If this isn't possible in the base 'tabular' datatype,
can it be done as a custom 'blast-tabular' datatype instead?

This relates to an open issues on improving the parameter widget
for selecting a column (or columns):

Bitbucket issue 554: Show column names, headers or first entry in
column select parameters
https://trello.com/card/554-show-column-names-headers-or-first-entry-in-column-select-parameters/506338ce32ae458f6d15e4b3/436

For instance, when sorting a BLAST tabular file, it should be
trivially easy to sort by bitscore without first having to go away
an lookup the meaning of each column in order to know this is
column 12.

Regards,

Peter

[*] This is one reason why I've just switched the default BLAST+
output from the standard 12 column output to the extended 24
column output in v0.0.17 of the wrappers:
http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/devteam/ncbi_blast_plus/
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