Hi Chris,<br><br>I think Sebastien and I need to talk a bit about this to figure it out since neither of us has enough knowledge on our own to solve this. <br><br>I cc'ed the paraview mailing list since someone else may have some good input too or may want to follow your path in the future.<br>
<br>Andy<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:39 PM, Chris Kees <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cekees@gmail.com">cekees@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">Hi Sebastien and Randall,<div><br></div><div>I think I'm probably the user Randall mentioned earlier. I'm responding off list because these seems a bit detailed for a regular post--feel free to post it back to the paraview list if you like. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Here's a rough idea of what I'm up to. I'm running the IPython notebook server (<a href="http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/interactive/htmlnotebook.html" target="_blank">http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/interactive/htmlnotebook.html</a>). I'm looking for a way to do interactive 3D graphics inside an IPython "notebook". I don't claim to know all the details of how the notebook server works but I think the set of connected services looks something like this:</div>
<div><br></div><div>WebClient (browser) <-> Tornado Web Server <-> IPython Client <-> IPython Kernel/Hub <-1-to-N-> Python Engines</div><div><br></div><div>where <-> is just some abstract connection (e.g. http, zeromq sockets,etc). </div>
<div><br></div><div>This set of processes basically gets started when I start the IPython Kernel on the command line of the server, though I can start "engines" later as well and connect/disconnect browsers without killing anything else. The kernel starts up a Tornado web server to begin serving up "notebook" pages, which are JSON files containing executable python code and text "cells". When somebody points a browser to a notebook (say localhost:8000/some_path/test.pynb). You can then execute and run the python code in the code cells by doing various things on the webpage representing the notebook (push 'run cell' etc.). The code cells can be executed either on the client python process, or the code can be sent through the hub to be run on a collection of "engines" also running python (and communicating with each other via MPI in my case). </div>
<div><br></div><div>If the code cell is run on engines you can pull objects in the engines' namespaces back onto the client. Now, on the client, if an expression returns an object that implements the interface of an IPython DisplayObject (<a href="http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/api/generated/IPython.core.display.html" target="_blank">http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/api/generated/IPython.core.display.html</a>), then it gets displayed as part of the webpage in an "output" cell. DisplayObject's can return HTML, JSON, javascirpt, SVG, and range of image formats. I'm attaching a pdf of a simple IPython notebook that has an expression returning a PNG DisplayObject at the very end.</div>
<div><br></div><div>In my case, the python engines are running MPI and solve a PDE in parallel. The data structures for the solution all get attached to VTK objects and a visualization pipeline on the engines. Also, Andy Bauer helped me get those VTK objects attached to paraview using the servermanager module a few weeks ago so I can do co-processing now as well. I'm already able to composite, render, and interact with 3D objects using my Qt front end and the python VTK API. I think it will be fairly simple to have the rank 0 engine generate a PNG of the rendered/composited image that will fulfill the requirements of an IPython PNG DisplayObject. That would give us non-interactive images of the solution in the notebook.</div>
<div><br></div><div>My question is whether there is a way to add ParaViewWeb into this collection of processes so we can generate not only stills but get full interactive 3D visualization in the notebook. I was thinking that a DisplayObject of type HTML, JSON, or Javascript might be able to write a bit of code that would point the browser to the tomcat server running a paraview web service. That service would itself be connected back to the same data sets on the engines. Something like this:</div>
<div><br></div><div>WebClient <-> Tornado <-> IPython Client .... <-> python engines (with VTK objects and a servermanager) </div><div> ^ ^</div>
<div> | |</div><div> Tomcat <-> ParaViewWS <-> PW server </div><div><br></div><div>
Anyway, if this seems like it's feasible I'd be willing to build all the paraview web components on my laptop where I already have IPython, VTK, and Paraview co-processing working. If that works then we might be able to get some support for something more ambitious where the engines are running on HPC machines.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Chris</div><div></div></div><br><div style="word-wrap: break-word;"><div><br><div><div><div>On Nov 29, 2011, at 12:26 PM, Sebastien Jourdain wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>
Hi Randall,<br><br>This sounds good, so tomcat can easily be used on any user account<br>with no right outside his home. You can even strip down the default<br>package of tomcat so you get only the minimum required for ParaViewWeb<br>
and you can run it on any port higher than 1024.<br><br>To do that, you will need to download tomcat on your own and<br>unzip/untar it, then deploy ParaViewWeb into it and start tomcat<br>yourself.<br>That's basically what we are doing for its development.<br>
<br>Hope this help,<br><br>Seb<br><br>On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Randall Hand <<a href="mailto:randall.hand@gmail.com" target="_blank">randall.hand@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Something I can run entirely without any higher-permissions to the system,<br>
</blockquote><blockquote type="cite">with no access to /etc or /usr folders.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Sebastien Jourdain wrote:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Hi Randall,<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Can you be more specific by what you mean by "standalone" and by<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">"can't use Tomcat" ?<br>
</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Because, for me tomcat can be standalone. Would you think something<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">more embedded such as Jetty or something that does not involved Java<br>
</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">at all ?<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">
Thanks,<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Seb<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">
<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Randall Hand<<a href="mailto:randall.hand@gmail.com" target="_blank">randall.hand@gmail.com</a>><br></blockquote>
</blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"> wrote:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I have a user interested in using ParaViewWeb as a front-end to some<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">
visualization tasks, however we can't use TomCat in our environment. Is<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">there any kind of "Standalone" service that can be used as a replacement?<br>
</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">
I know several apps that expose a web interface offer a limited function<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">webserver (trac, ipython, etc) that allows it to work standalone without<br>
</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">any<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">
external webserver configured. Does such a setup exist for ParaViewWeb?<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">--<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Randall Hand<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.vizworld.com" target="_blank">http://www.vizworld.com</a><br>
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