2011.12.22 Weekly Check in

• 13:31 <demory> Hello everyone. Shall we do a quick check in?
• 13:31 <andrewbyrd> Hi.
• 13:32 <FrankP_> hey
• 13:33 <andrewbyrd> I guess I'll start.
• 13:33 <demory> sure
• 13:33 <andrewbyrd> I finished up (on a branch) reworking the vertex/edge hierarchy
• 13:34 <andrewbyrd> mostly to have a clear hierarchy of which vertices belong to which graph layer and where they are connected
• 13:34 <andrewbyrd> to be able to say instanceof (TransitVertex) for example
• 13:34 <novalis_dt> I've been working a bit on the OSM processing code for TriMet. I had a naive implementation working, but it takes hours for what should be the work of about a minute, so I'm rewriting.
• 13:35 <andrewbyrd> the original intent was to help speed up our heuristic searches, but it got me thinking about some encapsulation and type issues so I made a bunch of other changes
• 13:35 <andrewbyrd> once i get it all written up I'll post to the list for discussion
• 13:35 <novalis_dt> andrewbyrd, awesome.
• 13:35 <andrewbyrd> other than that I have been working on analytics
• 13:36 <novalis_dt> Anything new on analytics?
• 13:36 <andrewbyrd> geotools triangulated network coverage factory told me "unimplemented"
• 13:36 <andrewbyrd> so since we don't really want to interpolate values the way a TIN does anyway
• 13:37 <andrewbyrd> I decided to make a raster using distance to nearest vertex within each pixel
• 13:37 <FrankP_> novalis_dt, awsome :-)
• 13:37 <andrewbyrd> a geotools GridCoverage backed by an ImageFunction that fetches the traveltimes straight out of the SPT result from OTP, via a spatial index implemented as a 2D locality-preserving hashtable
• 13:37 <novalis_dt> FrankP, it's a straightforward task that SQL is just not suited for :)
• 13:38 <FrankP_> (about the OSM processor)
• 13:38 <andrewbyrd> once I get the pixel/vertex association cached it should be nice and fast
• 13:39 <FrankP_> yeah, I had a bit of annoying SQL headaches this week...funky language that I like/hate...
• 13:39 <andrewbyrd> the raster has holes in it where there are not vertices (long roads) which (besides being ugly)
• 13:40 <andrewbyrd> could lead to inaccuracies for places outside the dense city
• 13:40 <novalis_dt> andrewbyrd, you could do it by geometry, right?
• 13:40 <andrewbyrd> so I will throw the edges into the index too and use distance to closest edge's endpoint
• 13:41 <FrankP_> andrew, is geotools calculating anything for you (from the raster too), or is it just rendering?
• 13:42 <andrewbyrd> I am thinking of writing straight to image pixels and bypassing geotools - have you guys used images as overlay layers in openlayers?
• 13:42 <FrankP_> everything is coming from geotools/geoserver via WMS
• 13:43 <andrewbyrd> Basically the only thing geotools is doing is figuring out where the sample points fall on the earth, asking for the travel time to those points, and exporting the result as a geotiff.
• 13:43 <FrankP_> it is a single image, but OL and GT are doing the alighnment
• 13:44 <FrankP_> understood ... thanks
• 13:44 <FrankP_> My update:
• 13:44 <FrankP_> Not much here...working on unrelated OTP stuff. But for the other project, I need a geocoder that can work with a screen-reader. I'm thinking to write this in python (that generates html). I'm thinking down the line to use the same python webapp for a text version of the OTP webapp (probably hosted in a separate github project ... with more sytem map functionality). Thoughts one way or another?
• 13:46 <FrankP_> p.s., the other project is a simple app that tells customers whether their origin & destination are either in / out of an ADA boundary (6 boundaries, actually ... Weekday/Sat/Sun Day/Evening)
• 13:46 <novalis_dt> Well, I always like Python.
• 13:47 <novalis_dt> Will this need to interact in any way with the OTP code other than making calls to API-webapp?
• 13:48 <FrankP_> I see it just making calls to the API webapp, Dave.
• 13:49 <FrankP_> And being something that would have route information, it could also provide the exclude route X interface (eventually)
• 13:49 <novalis_dt> OK.
• 13:49 <FrankP_> e.g., https://github.com/openplans/OpenTripPlanner/issues/463
• 13:50 <novalis_dt> Ah, yeah, the backend is there
• 13:50 <novalis_dt> but we need a front-end
• 13:51 <demory> My update -- Still focused primarily on the OTP automated setup work -- I believe all of the pieces have been written, now it's just a matter of stitching everything together, which Kevin and I will be doing next week in NYC. Will be checking in some new work to the OTPsetup repo before I leave town tomorrow.
• 13:52 <novalis_dt> Cool.
• 13:54 <FrankP_> David, what is the motivation for the OTP automated setup? Was a customer of yours asking for such a thing? (I know you and Kevin had mentioned hearing the 'we need an admin interface')...
• 13:54 <novalis_dt> FrankP, We hope that it will help us get customers
• 13:54 <novalis_dt> The setup tool will be way more complicated to set up than OTP itself )
• 13:55 <novalis_dt> So we'll run one
• 13:55 <novalis_dt> And then people will be able to submit GTFS over the web
• 13:55 <novalis_dt> And we'll be able to build a graph, report errors, etc, and say, " this is what your webapp looks like"
• 13:55 <demory> it definitely came up at the July workshop -- several people there thought it would be useful
• 13:56 <FrankP_> Right...sounds good. So you'll be hosting the app, ala SaaS.
• 13:56 <novalis_dt> Yeah
• 13:56 <demory> right now i think the setup process is one of the barriers to OTP deployment, esp. for non-technical agency types
• 13:56 <demory> so this could help get around that
• 13:56 <FrankP_> Agreed.
• 13:56 <andrewbyrd> yeah I get the impression that there are people trying to evaluate OTP but getting stuck on setup or small customization details
• 13:56 <andrewbyrd> the automated system should avoid IOC XML being their first experience of OTP
• 13:57 <FrankP_> I would like to avoid that too :-)
• 13:58 <FrankP_> To avoid XML, I guess we could switch to annotations (joking)
• 13:58 <demory> FrankP_ -- we'll at least get the app up and running -- from there we could go a couple different routes. some customers might want us to do continued maintenance. But w/ others we could just "hand it over" once its ready
• 13:58 <FrankP_> Right...
• 13:59 <demory> In any case we're hoping to have something public in Jan, so we'll see what sort of interest we get
• 13:59 <FrankP_> One thing that I (kinda) want from an Admin interface is the ability for Jeff Frane (technical marketing ... not a developer and not someone who will be restarting tomcat, etc...) to be able to maintain the system, generate new graphs and deploy them, etc...
• 14:00 -!- grant_h [d819d21b@gateway/web/freenode/ip.216.25.210.27] has joined #opentripplanner
• 14:00 <FrankP_> Otherwise, I'm going to be the one maintaining OTP vs. someone like Jeff (who does things now with ATIS ... which is still low level, shell scripts, etc...)
• 14:01 <novalis_dt> FrankP, so far, we're mostly working on the getting-it-running phase
• 14:01 -!- mele [d819d2ef@gateway/web/freenode/ip.216.25.210.239] has joined #opentripplanner
• 14:01 <novalis_dt> But we will probably have the ability to do all those tasks
• 14:01 <novalis_dt> I think we're going to have a crash-only design.
• 14:01 <novalis_dt> So "restart tomcat" means "spin up a new EC2 instance"
• 14:02 <novalis_dt> Which reminds me: demory, have we thought about doing some DNS?
• 14:02 -!- Ppppeeejjjjay [d819d37a@gateway/web/freenode/ip.216.25.211.122] has joined #opentripplanner
• 14:03 <novalis_dt> FrankP, anyway, send us your wishlist for Jeff, since Jeff is probably a prototypical customer.
• 14:03 <Ppppeeejjjjay> we were all locked out of our computers. did we miss anything exciting?
• 14:03 <novalis_dt> We don't promise to implement it, but it's nice to have info from real customers
• 14:04 <FrankP_> Okay I'll do that, Dave
• 14:05 <demory> to those just joining, welcome! Also: http://pastebin.com/dCADxsGp
• 14:05 <demory> novalis_dt when you say doing some DNS what do you mean exactly? Assigning domains to point to the AWS deployments?
• 14:05 <novalis_dt> demory, yeah
• 14:06 <novalis_dt> demory, so, imagine that we spin up a server, realize that there's a problem, terminate it, and start it up again
• 14:06 <novalis_dt> now we have to tell the potential customer a new URL
• 14:06 <novalis_dt> not to mention that it's an ugly AWS URL
• 14:06 <demory> Yeah I'm not sure. That's the sort of stuff kpw and I will be working though next week
• 14:06 <novalis_dt> OK, awesome
• 14:08 <demory> so once we have a server up and running we can't make any changes after it's started (e.g. restarting tomcat w/ a rebuilt graph)?
• 14:08 <FrankP_> sounds like an IP load balancer
• 14:08 <novalis_dt> demory, oh, we could
• 14:08 <novalis_dt> demory, but a crash-only design would be simpler
• 14:08 <novalis_dt> demory, alternately, we might want to switch to a bigger instance
• 14:08 <demory> ok
• 14:09 <FrankP_> We don't have a command in the API to tell OTP to reload a graph, correct?
• 14:09 <novalis_dt> FrankP, not really
• 14:10 <novalis_dt> We could add one triviall
• 14:10 <novalis_dt> y
• 14:10 <andrewbyrd> the mechanism is there in graphservice
• 14:12 <FrankP_> No biggie...I find it easy to simply bounce tomcat ... and since I have 4 instances running, it's easy knowing that things are truly reloaded via reboot.
• 14:12 <novalis_dt> FrankP, we would want that to be authenticated to prevent a DOS
• 14:12 <FrankP_> Yeah, that would kind suck if Google's bot found that url.
• 14:13 <novalis_dt> I'll add it when I get a chance; it seems generally usefull.
• 14:13 <novalis_dt> And not achievable from outside tomcat
• 14:14 <FrankP_> Could put it on a separate servlet path...then I could hide that path from the public urls, and it would only be reachable via internal paths/ports
• 14:14 <novalis_dt> Well, we already support authenticated services
• 14:15 <andrewbyrd> unless OTP should just watch for new graph files to appear in the bundle directory and load them
• 14:15 <novalis_dt> andrewbyrd, we risk loading a half-written graph that way
• 14:15 <andrewbyrd> optionally of course
• 14:15 <novalis_dt> It seem like it would need a lot of support.
• 14:16 <andrewbyrd> yes, just a thought. i suppose triggering it manually makes more sense.
• 14:17 <novalis_dt> OK. Anything from the interns?
• 14:19 <novalis_dt> OK, so I guess let's call it a day!
• 14:19 <demory> Sounds good to me!
• 14:20 <novalis_dt> Happy holidays to those who celebrate them!
• 14:20 <FrankP_> You too...have a good one everyone
• 14:20 -!- mele [d819d2ef@gateway/web/freenode/ip.216.25.210.239] has quit [Quit: Page closed]
• 14:21 <andrewbyrd> Bye all