NeuroML, NineML and Neurospaces / GENESIS 3

Two initiatives, NineML and NeuroML that compete for the same market that is so small that it does not exist yet. So no reason to get anxious nor excited about it. As long as they have complementary visions, under community control of course, this is a good thing and the future looks bright: as Ted Carnevale pointed out during the NeuroML meeting in Arizona: the competition between the Genesis and Neuron simulators has been beneficial for both, and at the same time these simulators have always been substantially different, serving different parts of the computational neuroscience community.

With the now mature core of the Neurospaces software components, I have focused development more on building interfaces of various sorts to create powerful links with external systems. Experimental interfaces implemented in the past include the Geometry libray and most importantly the interface with the Neuromorpho database.

I have worked on preliminary NeuroML and NineML interfaces in the new 'exchange' software component. This component connects directly to the API of the model-container such that G-3 has native NeuroML and NineML support (rather than indirect over XSLT as in G-2). Mando has a first interface between the GUI and the documentation system (although we will need to do some lining up of the interfaces between the GUI and other software components (gshell, documentation system and project-browser)).

So where do we go from here? The current roles in the G-3 team can be summarized as:

• Dave
  
  
  
  • GUI scripting in python (evaluation)
    
  • backward compatibility feedback
    
  • enhance and document debugging functionality of models and simulations.
    
  
  
• Allan
  
  
  
  • continue write documentation
    
  • specific GUI design documents based on Purkinje cell
    
  • develop relationship categories between computational models (different types of lineage ao.).
    
  • integrate this with the documentation tagging system
    
  
  
• Jim
  
  
  
  • GUI story board.
    
  
  
• Mando
  
  
  
  • lead of GUI development
    
  • packaging
    
  
  
• Zhiwei
  
  
  
  • read documentation
    
  • get familiar with software structure
    
  • get familiar with development processes and flows
    
  • interact with Mando
    
  
  
• Hugo
  
  
  
  • all the rest
    
    
    
    • network modeling (currently at 75%)
      
    
    
  • current focus on interfacing
    
    
    
    • continued SLI development
      
    • continued neuroml development
      
    • continued nineml development
      
    • pynn development
      
      
      
      • timed with the visit to the pynn code jam