The acronyme Alida refers to our Advanced Library for integrated development of data analysis applications. Alida defines data analysis procedures in terms of operators which subsequently or in parallel are applied to given data.
All Alida operators implement a common interface which defines operator input and output parameters as well as a unified invocation procedure. Thus, all operators developed based on the Alida library can be configured and invoked in a standardized manner. This lays the fundament for integrating several very nice features in Alida which significantly increase the usability of Alida-based libraries, both for programmers as well as for users. In particular, the unified operator interface, e.g., supports
automatic generation of graphical and commandline user interfaces
automatic process documentation by operator call graphs
The graphical operator runner that you have started already presents you all properly annotated operators based on Alida that are found in the classpath. Given the tree view of these operators you can select the operator of your choice, configure it, execute it, and finally inspect its results.
Initially Alida ships with some demo operators that demonstrate the broad range of features Alida incorporates, e.g.
inherent data I/O for the most common Java data types, like
native types (int, boolean, Double, String, etc.)
1D and 2D arrays
enumerations
collections
support for operators as parameters
support for parametrized classes as parameters
ranking of operators, i.e. as standard or application
grading of parameters as standard or advanced
saving and loading of parameters
In parametrized classes members can be annotated as parameters. Given that appropriate I/O providers are available, these classes can then directly be used as operator parameters without additional effort.
You are invited to explore Alida's functionality! If you have questions, comments or other concerns, do not hesitate to contact us:
Web: http://www.informatik.uni-halle.de/alida Email: alida@informatik.uni-halle.de
Have fun!
The Alida Development Team
Halle, March 2012