Minutes 26 January 2006

Meeting held 11am 26 January 2006

Present: Poul, Peter, Carey, Shane, Andre, Karl, Travis Apologies: Greg

General: Meeting is being recorded and an ogg file will be put online following the meeting

An audio recording of the meeting can be "downloaded":ftp://ftp.bioeng.auckland.ac.nz/cmiss/opencmiss/meeting-26.1.2006.ogg now. Unfortunately only 45mins of the 60min meeting were recorded due to technical difficulties. We have resolved these for next time.

1 Data structures.

• Chris's questions

  • Data structure correspondence.
  • What is an ensemble?

  a collection of elements.

  Shane has asked Chris to write an API for storage and distribution

  API's needed for defining elements, evaluating elements, storage and distribution control (Chris). All 3 API's to go into the same data structures library.

  Chris concerned about efficiency behind the API's, and would like there to be provision for more control.

  API must also address issues such as syncing of storages.

  We can start with an API that doesn't implement everything, then add in the more complicated features as required - as long as the API's are cleanly defined.

  Poul has some more information on some resources that could be useful, will put on the wiki.

• Shane's questions

  • Element point : Region point : Field values link

  Currently have explicit links between them, which is a big overhead for serialisation. Want an API that enables to define these simply, don't want to have to make each object explicity - even in code.

  Need several more complete examples with succinct description of how they would be implemented.

  • Region functions. Can you find out ensembles and fields defined on a

    region?

  Can you ask a region what fields are defined on it, children it has and so on. Creation, interrogation and modification functions need to be defined for each object next. Shane would like the methods done by Tuesday, but is unsure what things can do or be asked.

  • Ensemble hierarchy.

  Could be the same as the region hierachy seems wasteful.

  • Ensemble scope = region. Progessively defining a field.

  Can have field defined over a region without having populated it completely with values. Can't use it, but can define it.

  Field is an ensemble together with variables possibly undefined.

  • Time based fields

  as yet not mentioned.... what will we do. needs more thought

  • Interfaces

• Examples

2 Future Meetings.

• Development framework.
  • How are we going to develop code?
  • What documentation systems, bug systems, code management systems do we want to employ?