Single Instance Webstart : RFC 22

Editor(s): Sarah Killcoyne

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About this document

This is an official Request for Comment (RFC) for Add your text here.

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Status

12/12/06 Preliminary writeup, comments appreciated

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Proposal

Use of Cytoscape via webstart could be easier and permit greater functionality to be available to a webstart user if only single instances are permitted but new arguments can be passed to the original instance from a new jnlp.

Biological Questions / Use Cases

Use Case:

1. U Mich has a website front end to a molecular interactions database. Links on the site open new instance of cytoscape. This prevents any cross-network functions from being used.

2. t1dbase.org has website front end to multiple protein-protein sources. Also opens multiple instances.

General Notes

By opening multiple instances cross-network functions are unavailable. However, there are cases where a new instance may be desirable so it needs to be an option.

ISSUES:

Requirements

From the JDK 1.5 jnlp.jar SingleInstanceService and SingleInstanceListener

The jnlp.jar file currently included in libs would need to be updated.

Deferred Items

Open Issues

I'm unsure what the best solution would be. The jnlp classes are specific to webstart so should not hinder multiple instances of the desktop. I think for simplicity adding the SingleInstanceService/Listener to the intialization would work fine. As a plugin it would need access to the method that parses arguments in CyMain. Either way would require notifying any listening plugin that new arguments have been introduced.

Backward Compatibility

Expected growth and plan for growth

References

Download single instance plugin: http://db.systemsbiology.net/cytoscape/skillcoyne/TestPlugin.jar

Source code for plugin: http://db.systemsbiology.net/cytoscape/skillcoyne/TestPluginSource.zip

Implementation Plan

Comments

GaryBader - 2006-12-14 09:39:10

We should definitely do this.  We were basically waiting until Java1.5 was more widely available to do this and now that it is (and that Cytoscape has moved to 1.5), we should be more confident that most web start users will have the latest version that supports this feature.

SingleInstanceWebstart (last edited 2009-02-12 01:03:13 by localhost)

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