[SAGA-RG] Fwd: SAGA python bindings...

[Andre Merzky]

Hi all,

one of our discussion topics for next OGF is (again) the evolution
of the SAGA python bindings.  To give some context of the current
discussions, I forward the below email thread between the jSAGA group
and the SAGA-C++ group, for your interest and input.

Best, Andre.




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: M.A. Santcroos <m.a.santcroos at amc.uva.nl>
Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: SAGA python bindings...
To: Sylvain Reynaud <Sylvain.Reynaud at in2p3.fr>, Andre Merzky <andre at merzky.net>
Cc: Julien Devemy <julien.devemy at in2p3.fr>


Hi all,

I waited a bit with responding, assuming that Julien is back now :-)

A short intro about myself, I'm working on grid related things at
the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. Because of our presence
in Netherlands/Europe we are mainly interested in gLite.  Since a
couple of months I've been working closely with the SAGA-C++ group
(and now also formally a part of that).

At the AMC we've (of course) always been interested in programmatic
access to the Grid middleware, and have found that spread over
multiple packages. We've used some of the Python/Java APIs provided
with gLite, and we have quite some usage of the VLET API (Java). As
the VLET is nowhere near a standard, we have interest in moving to SAGA.

Some comments in line below.

On 8/8/11 11:20 , "Sylvain Reynaud" <Sylvain.Reynaud at in2p3.fr> wrote:
>
> Yes, JPySAGA implements the same python binding as JySAGA (the python
> wrapper on top JavaSAGA), but as far as I remember Julien also made a
> few compatibility tests with the wrapper that implements this binding on
> top of SAGA-C++.
> We were not able to get everything working because this wrapper was
> still under development, but we were at least able to implement the
> simple use-cases that we shown in our demo at Brussels last year, in
> order to show that SAGA-C++ and JSAGA could be used together in the same
> application.

One of the issues in the JPySAGA is the usage of the "create" class
methods. Do you know the history of that?  It feels very un-pythonic,
and is also different than the SAGA-C++ Python bindings.


>> Either way, as we do have a significant community of python users for
>> SAGA, we are still interested in driving a uniform python bindings
>> forward.  Would you be interested in discussing that topic again,
>> or is that at the moment out of scope for your group?
>
> Yes, we are still very interested in discussing that topic.
> I put in CC Julien (in holidays this week) because he has developed
> JPySAGA and he knows Python far better than I do.

Good. As said, we are interested particularly in JSAGA because of gLite
support.
Our language choices are Java and Python, so I already proposed to assist
in sorting out the python differences between the various implementations.


>> PS.: you are likely aware thet OGF-33 is being held n Lyon, in mid
>> September.  Do you plan to attend, by any chance?
>
> Yes, I am already registered. I really have no excuse for not doing the
> "travel" since I can see the place of the conference through the window
> of my desktop!  ;-)

Note that I will also be in Lyon, so I would be happy to meet up with you.

Regards,

Mark




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