The tranSMART 17.1 development project will tackle many features which will make the platform more stable, future-proof and will make development much more enjoyable. This includes automated-test coverage for all Core API and REST API calls and documentation of those calls and the full database schema.

1. 27th of October 2016
Piotr Zakrzewski – The Hyve
TranSMART Pro 17.1 project
Technical Overview

2. 2
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

3. 3
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

4. 4
Repository Structure
Before you can
deploy it here ...

5. 5
Repository Structure
core-api core-db rest-api
R
modules
core-api
transmart
data
legacy db
you need all of these ...
...and these...

6. 6
Repository Structure
16.2:
- TranSMART 16.2 spans 10 core repositories
- Building & testing tranSMART requires a special
setup (that resides in yet another repository)
17.1:
- Single repository with all core components
necessary for building working tranSMART WAR
file

7. 7
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

8. 8
Versioning of Artifacts
16.2:
- Most components are versioned as
SNAPSHOTs
- core-api, core-db, rest-api, transmartApp and
all other core components need to match strictly
in revision in order to work
17.1:
- Single repository: all changes to different
components come in a single PR

9. 9
Build Process
16.2:
- Transmart 16.2 (Grails 2) uses Gant scripts for building
- git-repo used for fetching all repositories
- custom groovy script (dependency manager) needed for
dev setup
17.1:
- Gradle build system (comes with Grails 3)
- One step build (also with database setup)
- just git clone && ./gradlew build

10. 10
Test Setup
16.2:
- Custom script matching branches during travis
run
- Different way to run tests locally and on travis
- No reliable way to run tests for all components
- Tested on H2 in-memory database
17.1:
- ./gradlew test both locally and on travis
- tested against Oracle and Postgres

11. 11
- Default option for Grails 3.X
- Very versatile build system
- Also very popular (gained momentum due to adoption by
Android)
- Especially suitable for multi-project, multi-language
builds like tranSMART

12. 12
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

13. 13
Java 7 to Java 8
tranSMART is still running on Java 7 which is no longer
supported, even for security updates since April 2015.
Java 7 reached its end of life

14. 14
Groovy 2.4 and Grails 3
- Java 8 supports invokeDynamic, which should increase
performance of many groovy dynamic calls
- Many workarounds accounting for old Grails and
Hibernate versions bugs no longer necessary
- Upgrade allowed us to adopt better build system: Gradle

15. 15
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

16. 16
REST-API versioning
● TranSMART REST-api is used in production
● Several clients and third-party apps
● But development needs to continue …

17. 17
REST-API versioning
- in 17.1 REST-api versioning is introduced
- Versioning is done on the url level
- GET /studies becomes GET /v1/studies
- only minor influence on existing clients (change of base
url configuration to include version)

18. 18
Current REST-API documentation

19. 19
Open API (previously Swagger)

20. 20
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

21. 21
Db schema as of now (16.2)

22. 22
Db schema as of now (16.2)
Some facts about the current schema:
Study exists only as string ids sprinkled around the star
schema (no table for study)
Concepts and patients belong to a study (cannot be
shared)
Combination of patient-concept yields a single
observation

23. 23
Db schema of 17.1

24. 24
Db schema of 17.1
Most important Consequences of 17.1 changes:
Concepts and patients can be shared between studies
more straightforward cross trial comparison (trial-visit
dimension) and longitudinal data (start date) support
Much redundancy and inconsistencies removed

25. 25
Hypercube
- Introduction of longitudinal data
requires a whole different
approach
- Modifiers used to store
time point. Both relative and
absolute allowed
- Each observation has effectively an additional dimension
(hence the Hypercube)

26. 26
How to query a Hypercube ?

27. 27
Impact on backwards compatibility
- Old UI will work only with old data, new data (especially
longitudinal) will not be supported
- Old ui will not make use of new cross-trial functionality
- Migration path will be provided between 16.2 and 17.1

28. 28
New UI however will support the longitudinal
data and other features

29. 29
What does 17.1 mean for future
development?
Improved ease of development
● Clean up of repositories (single repo)
● One step build
● Dependencies update
● Rest api improvements
● Consolidation and extension of the star schema to
better fit tranSMART and new data types
● Documentation

30. 30
Documentation
- one of the project deliverables is documentation on the
database schema
- REST-api documented with Open-API
- Documentation as part of git repository

31. 31
Conclusion
17.1 aside from many new features is also a major
clean-up that will make future developments easier

33. Backup slides
33

34. 34
Arvados Keep

35. 35
Performance Benchmarks
- Goal: safeguarding performance of REST-api
- Implemented as a Gradle task (single command)
- Should help developers spot falls in performance after
new changes
- Reference setup on Amazon will be available to make
benchmarks comparable

36. 36
Other changes
- Multiple observations per concept-patient support
- Categorial variables no longer loaded per value (e.g.
variable Treated being two variables: yes and no)
- Several new tables to accommodate new HDD data type
(RNAseq measurement per transcript) and table to store
generic links to external resources (files)