What's New in 1.5
Galaxy 1.5 contains many new and exciting features in both the community and enterprise editions.
Galaxy Community Edition
Typed properties
In 1.0, properties could only be string values. In 1.5, you can define different property types in the administration menu. These properties can be
- A single string value
- A list of string values
- Users
- Links betwen artifacts
- Lifecycles
Entries to describe any type of service - RESTful, TCP, JMS, etc
In addition to being able to store artifacts, Galaxy can also store entries inside the registry. Entries can represent a wide variety of services as they do not require a service description like WSDL, they just store pure metadata. For instance, a RESTful service can be listed in the registry by creating an entry and storing information such as it's URL, links to documentation,
Scripting shell
A fundamental rule of integration software is that every organization has a different set of needs and requirements. Often this requires Galaxy customization. To make this easier, we created a scripting shell which allows you to easily write extensions. These scripts can be set to run on startup or periodically via cron commands. Here are some possible script ideas:
- Listen for lifecycle transition events and email interested parties
- Replicate a workspace from a development instance to a production instance
- Prune old builds from a development instance
- Install new custom policies
Feeds for search results
Now every workspace and every search has a link to a feed for that search. This allows you to easily subscribe to changes occurring inside Galaxy and monitor them via a newsreader.
Improved Atom API
The Atom API now allows you to do even more operations on artifacts.
- In addition to the <artifact-info> element, there are also now <workspace-info> and <entry-info> elements.
- Versions can be renamed by updating the versionLabel.
- Workspaces are now listed inline with artifacts and entries. Old URLs which end with ";workspaces" are now deprecated, but still supported.
- A single version of an artifact/entry can easily be accessed directly via a query API. For instance: "http://host/api/registry/workspace/hello.xsd?primary.lifecycle.phase='Default:Created'"
Event API
Nearly all important changes inside Galaxy now trigger an internal event - from property changes to new artifacts/entries to lifecycle tansitions. Using our simple annotation based approach of listening for events, its easy to take actions, such as sending notifications or applying remote policies.
Improved Galaxy Query Language
Galaxy is able to support much more sophisticated queries as it now supports the "or" keyword. For example, you can write:
select artifact, entry where primaryContact.name = 'Dan' or secondaryContact.name = 'Dan'
Auto Upgrade Capabilities
Galaxy will automatically upgrade your previous Galaxy version to the latest. Simply install and go!
Galaxy Enterprise Edition
The following features are new in Galaxy 1.5 and are available in the Enterprise Edition only.
Remote Workspaces
Remote workspaces can now be attached to a local registry, allowing you to easily browse other Galaxy instances.
There are currently a few limitations which will be addressed in a future version of Galaxy:
- Searching remote workspaces is not supported
- Metadata is not carried over in the user interface
Replication
Replication takes advantage of the administration shell and the remote workspaces capabilities to allow you to easily copy workspaces from one Galaxy instance to another. This is very useful if you wish to periodically push production worth artifacts/entries from a development instance of Galaxy to a production instance. By writing a simple script and scheduling it, you're able to control how and when replication occurs.