[BioPython] large data distribution (was: versioning, distribution and webdav)

[Andrew Dalke]

Rune Linding <linding@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE>:
>to be short.... i think its time that we jump onto this project:
>
>http://www.eu-datagrid.org

Possibly.  Problems I have with it are:

 - I really didn't like the word 'grid' when I heard it a few
     years back as GRiD.  But then, I didn't like "www" so I'm
     not the best judge of this.

 - their current site is poorly designed, their new one uses
     a Shockwave plugin and their brochure seems to have froze
     my PDF reader.  Ah, no, it's just a 4MB file it had to
     suck down through my modem to read 4 pages of text.  Lots
     of pretty color pictures though.

 - It falls in the category of Grand Projects, and I've found that
    those require a lot of time, research, politics and money.
    Tracking what's going on means going to a lot of meetings in
    person, knowing the right contacts (which I don't have) and
    reading and writing a lot of boring reports. Last time I was
    involved in a Grand Project I got pretty frustrated.

 - I don't think anything they are proposing would work over a
     T1 line, which means I couldn't ever use it over DSL or 56K.
     Actually, I can't find a solid statement of the details of
     how this will work (because it's still all research) so I
     could be wrong.

 - Those last two together mean that I personally would have somewhere
     between zero and zilch influence.  Why should I get involved?

> perhaps its time for biology to raise a hand in the voting?

It does say that CNRS will work on using the grid for humane genome
exploration.

                    Andrew
                    dalke@acm.org