Zoom*UserViews software

Use Zoom*UserViews online

Zoom*UserViews was first designed to work using an Oracle database to store the workflow definitions, executions logs...

A web implementation is now available that does not require any DBMS configuration, it uses an embedded database (Apache Derby to store this data. The major differences are:

  • The data cannot be shared it will only be available on your computer
  • Provenance is not computed on the server side but on the client (although here the overhead is limited since server=client).

It is also slower than when using an Oracle implementation but it is still pretty fast.

To start Zoom*UserViews, please click on the button:

Note:

  • You need to have Java installed. If you don't you won't see the button but a link to install java instead (automatic installation for Internet Explorer)
  • If using Internet Explorer you might not notice the IE information bar at the top of the window (asking if you agree to run the Sun Java WebStart ActiveX), you will need to accept this if it shows up
  • The application will ask you to accept a security certificate issued by our group, you need to accept this so that we can create your local database in ~/.zoomUserViews (this will use about 3MB).
  • If you want to run Zoom*UserViews from Linux you will need to install Java 6. For Linux distributions that are not yet officially supported for Java 6 such as RedHat you will need to install the compat-libstdc++ libraries and it should work fine.
  • Java 6 is not yet publicly available for Mac OSX, but you could probably use the developer release. This has not been tested yet.

Use Zoom*UserViews with Oracle

Download the package

The zoomUserViewsOracle.zip file contains:

  • The sql scripts to create the database
  • The Jar file used to run the project
  • A configuration file to customize for database access

You have to unzip it on the local hard drive, we will refer to this location as $ZOOM for the remaining instructions.

Create the Oracle database

Zoom*UserViews has been tested with Oracle 10.2.0.3, we recommend that you use the same version. However there are no known incompatibilities with earlier version as long as they are superior to 8i (Zoom*UserViews uses the Connect By operator). Here are the steps to setup your Oracle database:

  • Create an empty database with parameters that match you hardware. The default configuration uses a SID named ZoomUserViews but you can change it.
  • Use the script $ZOOM/sql/0-createUserProvenance.sql to create the provenance schema (and user). You can change the default password in the sql file.
  • Use the script $ZOOM/sql/1-createTablespaces.sql to create the tablespaces, it will ask you for the directory to use.
  • Use the script $ZOOM/sql/2-createTables.sql to create the project tables (under the provenance schema)
  • Use the script $ZOOM/sql/3-createViews.sql to create the project views
  • Use the script $ZOOM/sql/4-createProvenanceProc.sql to create the stored procedure used to compute provenance
  • The script $ZOOM/sql/5-updateStatistics.sql updates the schema statistics. It should be run once you have some data in the database, and once in a while to maintain the statistics up to date.

Update the configuration file

  • Open the file $ZOOM/SpringConfig.xml
  • For the line <property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@DBDemo2:1521:ZoomUserViews"/>, replace dbdemo2 with your server full DNS or IP address. Replace also ZoomUserViews with your database SID if you used a different one.
  • For the line <property name="password" value="provenancePwd"/> replace the password if different

Run the application

You should now be able to run the application by double-clicking on the JAR file if using Windows, clicking for Mac OS X, or using java -jar workloadgui.jar from the command line.

However you won't have any workflow in your database, here are a few steps to get you started with demo data (you can also use workflow generator if you wish):

  • Import demo workflows:
    • Use the menu File/Open
    • Under the (empty) workflows list you click on the button Import (from file)
    • You can import any set of sample workflows available under $ZOOM/demoWorkflows (note that you can import several worklows at a time)
  • Generate runs
    • You can use the multi-run generation tool to generate runs for several worklows at once (menu Tools/Multi runs)