Semantic Werks

I’m working on a project with my brother. The idea is to be able to visualize results from microarray experiments he has done in the lab. I’m taking an image of brain regions and loading the microarray data. The expression levels for the various regions and genes can then be seen as you a)mouse over a region and b) select a gene. There are also sliders that allow one to refine the results (and there are a lot of them).

To develop the application, I’m using Flash. I tried Flex, the web application version of Flash, but the main need I had was designing a rich GUI (a labeled brain).

In Flex, you can create applications much like Flash, with the absence of heavy-duty focus on timelines, stages, etc. The main advantage seems to be an extensive and speedy library of rich components, with extension mechanisms. Flex can also talk to other tiers, middleware, database, etc. via Flex Data Services (all this is freeware, btw, unless you have a heavy need for data services, where it gets pricey).

However, Flex seems in many ways to duplicate the functionality of HTML forms. I don’t see the point of a set of UI components that are comboboxes, lists, and text-entry fields, since these are also present in HTML. What is useful is the ability to draw and diagram a non-standard component like my brain chart.  I’m still awaiting an application that can provide the rich graphical editing tools of Flash with the lack of timelines and scenes that Flex provides. There is a way to integrate a Flash component in Flex, but this seemed cumbersome.

For data access, I used Rails to serve up XML over the wire. It isn’t really REST style, but simpler than other approaches. I didn’t need to use Rails to do this — probably a direct SQL call would have been simple enough — but I wanted to try it out.

Why not AJAX? In some sense this is a false comparison. AJAX is a methodology, which Flex partly adheres to — asynchronous and XML, just not via Javascript. The main difference seems to be that one doesn’t need to muck around in Javascript and CSS/DHTML for the UI. Frankly CSS and HTML scare me with their complexities.  The resulting Flash movie is accessible to most browsers out there (although the broken context menu is annoying).

What is a RIA anyway? Many of these concepts seem to be drawn directly from good ole Applets, which to my mind are very much like Flash movies from an end-user POV (clearly less nimble, but still…). I suspect that for most applications, the simple suite of UI components that HTML defines are probably sufficient. It will only be for graphical charts and displays that Flash-like tools will be necessary.

“Open Secrets” is a UK-based blog about openness in government, access to information and so on. It is quite interesting in its own right, but one post seems to have struck a nerve. It was regarding the responsibility of energy companies to publish their meter accuracy data.  The meters record gas/water/electricity usage and then bill you accordingly. Obviously, if there is a faulty meter, it could be costly.

At any rate,  the post got a lot of comments from people who have had terrible run-ins with the various entities that make up the British energy system. Just from reading the comments, it seems clear that the system in Britain is the usual half-baked privatization scheme, with all the disadvantages of private delivery — like confusing options, secretive contracts, etc. — and all the disadvantages of a public system, namely high prices and a very paternalistic attitude towards the client. Even accounting for the fact that the people who post comments are often there because they have tried to pull a fast one — forgot to read the bill, signed a contract they didn’t read, etc., there still seem to be some funny and horrible tales.

Though the original post was regarding the specific problem of getting access to meter failure rates (which isn’t possible), the comments have turned into a mini-community for people seeking help with their specific problems. It’s either an illustration of the social nature of the web or the horrible state of British energy (or both).