[ome-users] OME 2.6.0 Release

Thu Dec 7 17:36:04 GMT 2006

The OME development team is proud to announce the official release of 
OME 2.6.0!
Download for generic UNIX:
http://cvs.openmicroscopy.org.uk/snapshots/ome-2.6.0.tar.gz
Or, a graphical installation wizard for OS X (universal native PPC/ 
Intel):
http://cvs.openmicroscopy.org.uk/snapshots/ome-installer-2.6.0.dmg
The OS X installer includes all software dependencies for both 
architectures, so its a large (~40 Mb) download.
Thanks to all who contributed, and helped us test the release 
candidates!
We will be updating our website (http://openmicroscopy.org) in the 
next day or so to reflect this new official release.
The major changes in this release (with respect to OME 2.4.0) were in 
the web interface, access control, and connectivity with other 
applications. Reports indicate that this release is also much easier 
to install than OME 2.4.0.
The web interface was revamped to make it entirely HTML template- 
based. The templates are indexed by the DB, so each user can have 
their own collection of templates to view specific types or 
collections of information. Since templates are mostly just HTML, 
the user interface can be changed without having to program. The UI 
allows switching templates on the fly with a drop-down menu.
Access to objects is now controlled through provenance instead of 
containership. That's a fancy way to say that objects are now owned 
by those who crated them rather than by those who own the objects 
they're contained in. The other way was not only more convoluted to 
say, it lead to many more inconsistencies.
Two-way integration with Excel (OME-Excel.xls) allows populating 
spreadsheets directly from a live OME server using a VisualBasic 
library included in src/Excel/OME-Excel.xls. A spreadsheet importer 
allows bulk annotation of images as well as populating generic 
structured data - either from native Excel documents or tab-delimited 
text files.
Connectivity with Matlab is much improved and more robust. Images 
managed by OME can be accessed from matlab using matlab's imread() 
function. Extensive testing and validation of OME Analysis Modules 
implemented as functions in matlab (i.e. ".m" files). Most matlab 
functions can be used unchanged both in "pure matlab" and in OME 
(with appropriate XML wrappers).
Among other features included:
* Better VisBio support.
* Guest access.
* Encryption of passwords in transit over http.
* Graphical OS X Installation "Wizard".
* More robust, easier installation on supported platforms.
* Substantially improved latency and performance for remote access.
* A simplified URL-based API to get OME data as tab-delimited text 
tables (basis for OME-Excel.xls).
* Improved import format support
* Simplified and more robust data curation: Deletion of images, 
datasets, users and module execution results with the ome commander
* New web and command-line wizards make it easy to convert 
spreadsheets into structured OME annotation
* More useable and flexible 3+4 D segmentation with FindSpots.
* Integrated on-line help!
Anticipated major features in our next release - 2.6.1:
* Integration with LDAP (Thanks to Mike McCaughey of Vanderbilt)
* Integration with LOCI's BioFormats (adds support for tons of new 
image types)
* Improvements to integration with LOCI's VisBio
* Better (slightly) security over http to prevent some forms of 
session stealing.
* Allow use of pre-compiled MATLAB modules (i.e. without a MATLAB 
license).
* Robust distributed image analysis over many network-connected "nodes".
Much of this functionality is already in CVS (HEAD), so we anticipate 
this release will be in early 2007.
Enjoy!