DawnScience

The Data Analysis WorkbeNch (DAWN) is an eclipse based workbench for doing scientific data analysis. It implements sophisticated support for visualization of data in 1D, 2D and 3D; Python script development, debugging and execution; Workflows for analyzing scientific data calling Python and binary codes.

DAWN is not restricted to one scientific domain. It is developed by and for the synchrotron community foremost but has strong overlap with other communities like neutron scattering, photon science and any scientific communities with the above or similar needs.

DAWN is an open source software built on the Eclipse/RCP platform in order to scale to address a wide range of applications and to benefit from the workbench and advanced plugin system implemented in Eclipse. Due to standardization of the plugin mechanism of eclipse, the framework is highly modular and easily extendable. There exists already a rich set of plugins ranging from an ICAT interface to a TANGO-module covering substantial parts of the scientific workflow.

Interfaces

With Dawn one can either add new features using python scripts with pydev, using workflows or with Java in the form of osgi plugins. The python API and workflows are user level since any user may extend Dawn this way without changing Dawn. The Java programmer will normally need to contribute to the github repos and will need to rebuild Dawn before the feature is available in Dawn or will be using Dawn APIs in their own project, such as GDA for instance.
 

Visualization

The plotting system in Dawn is a feature rich and elegant API which as well as plotting data can manage tools and selection regions. It is encapsulated behind an interface (feature rich and well documented, see javadocs). This interface is called IPlottingSystem and 1D, 2D and 3D plotting, multiple axes, multiple regions (replaces overlays in the old system), configuration of almost everything, real time / interactive plots, advanced histogramming etc. Unlike the plotting system in SDA, the default implementation of IPlottingSystem (known as 'Light Weight Plotting System') will pass over NX clients and other remote client technologies. In addition, it is no longer necessary to manage the low level drawing outside the plotting package for regions. A feature rich set of regions are provided in the API.

Resources

DawnScience is not a PaNdata ODI development. However, PaNdata ODI partners ESRF and DLS are the main developers of the project. The integration of data catalogs (ICAT), Workflow engines as well as HDF5/Nexus support make Dawn an important analysis framework to demonstrate services and interoperability.