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Workbench » History » Version 7

Tom Clegg, 07/09/2014 11:47 AM

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h1. Workbench
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Developer documentation:
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* [[Hacking Workbench]]
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* [[Workbench UI images]]
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Workbench is the primary browser-based tool for Arvados users. In addition to providing built-in generic browsing tools for data and analysis jobs, Workbench acts as a gateway and integration point for analysis and visualization applications running in VMs on the cloud.
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The built-in browsing features in Workbench are also available via command line tools or any other SDK; Workbench does not need any special privileges[1]. The browsing features are offered for two reasons:
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* *Convenience* — Sometimes it's quicker to click than to type, and sometimes it's helpful to see progress bars instead of ASCII art.
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* *Example* — The source code is an example of how to use Arvados and the Rails SDK.
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The Arvados API and authentication system facilitate a smooth user experience and effective data sharing when working with multiple independent web-based applications.
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Workbench is built with Ruby on Rails using the Arvados Rails SDK.
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(In a sense, Workbench is the web browser SDK -- but we don't call it that because we don't expect anyone to write an application by scripting a web browser.)
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fn1. Exception: Each site has a Workbench installation which is trusted enough to see the authentication tokens _for a user who is logged in to that Workbench._ This gives the user a way to obtain authentication tokens for API clients/environments that aren't well suited to the OpenID/OAuth2 authentication process, like CLI tools.