Future Work

Jalama development has been focused on building a system that can generate a data collection application using Ecological Metadata Language (EML) documents as input. The use of EML was chosen because it has the ability to adequately describe data collections commonly designed and used by ecologists. It was thought that by combining EML and the Jalama Project, ecologists could easily develop field-data collection applications that they could use to generate metadata at the same time as collecting data. The upside of automatically generating metadata while collecting data is that this combination (data/metadata) would contain the (embedded) information needed for scientists to understand the nature and structure of the data so that the data could be used for analyses in the future. Moreover, with metadata, these data can be ingested by analytical and archival tools commonly used in the field of ecology (i.e. Morpho and Metacat).

To this end, the following additional work would be considered beneficial, given adequate time and funding:

UI Generation for EML Datasets With Multiple Tables

Currently, Jalama can generate a user interface for only a single table within an Ecological Metadata Language (EML) document. In order to generate meaningful data collection applications, Jalama will need to create UI’s from all the tables described by an EML document. This further development necessitates a subsystem that can understand and manipulate relational data structures (e.g. foreign key relations and cardnality constraints) as well as a working pagination system that can be used for displaying multi-paged UI’s. To bolster the efficiency of field data collection, it was envisioned that Jalama would be able to interface with external devices like GPS receivers, digital cameras and bar-code scanners. Below is a list of future improvements that can be made to make Jalama more usable and appealing to a larger community of users.

Pagination

Work on the Jalama pagination system, the system for creating and presenting multi-paged UI's, is incomplete. Currently, neither the UI generation creates multi-paged UI's, nor is the UI presentation system capable of presenting multi-paged UI's. However, the Jalama API does support a multi-paged UI; meaning that there are objects within the Jalama API for representing multi-paged UI's. To make the system multi-page capable, the business rules system needs to be extended so that the rules system can be used to assign elements to a specific page in addition to assigning widgets to elements. Also, the presentation layer needs to be extended to use logic for allowing users to traverse between pages. These modifications will require both back-end (Java) and front-end (XUL/XBL/JS) development.

External Devices

To bolster the efficiency of field data collection, it was envisioned that Jalama would be able to interface with external devices like GPS receivers, digital cameras and bar-code scanners. Currently Jalama supports no external devices and there are no provisions in the Jalama architecture for supporting external devices. Recently, however, there have been movements within the Java community to develop standards and API's for interfacing with GPS so conceivably the ability to add this and other external devices will be easier in the future using API that abstract the actual workings of the devices and their drivers.

Build an XML Data Collection System Akin to the Handheld Client – Morpho-plugin System

Though the rules that generate the UI's in Jalama were written specifically for EML, there is very little, from and architectural standpoint, that is EML-specific about the Jalama system. During the last half-year Jalama development was directed towards integration with Morpho and out of this emphasis came the Jalama-Morpho plugin. With very little work, a more generic XML data collection system could be implemented so that arbitrary XML documents could be used for generating data collection applications. We see this development as a low effort - high impact initiative to make the Jalama technology available to a much larger user community.

Testing and Benchmarking the Jalama System

Scientists with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Study of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) will be testing the Jalama system in their nearshore marine ecosystem research. Tests will include comparing collecting data with Jalama with collecting data both by pen and paper, and with tools similar to Jalama (e.g. other handheld devices). Tests will quantify the the benefit of using Jalama at various stages of the data collection/integration stages as well as across the entire workflow including:collection application design, implementation, training, data collection, data integration and archival.