Alert community to API changes

[wmoore]

Need to update ​http://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/ome/wiki/Api/BlitzGateway with a bit more info? Then post to lists and forums saying 'watch this space'. Need to discuss what guarantees of stability we can give. Current e-mail text below.

The BlitzGateway? API, as described ​http://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/ome/wiki/OmeroPy/Gateway and used by the OmeroWeb framework is being substantially revised in the 4.3 release of OMERO, scheduled for June 2011.

These changes aim to reduce the number of methods, while increasing the available functionality.

The details of which methods are being removed, and how to achieve the same functionality from new methods can be found ​http://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/ome/wiki/Api/BlitzGateway (summarised below).

The BlitzGateway? API is an attempt to unify all of our internal uses of the OMERO API while providing a more pythonic interface to end-users. This is, however, a work in progress, and feedback is very much welcome. The page above will be kept up to date with changes as the release approaches.

Do note that some of the methods which could not yet be removed in the refactoring are not intended for general consumption. Such internal methods will be documented and should be used sparsely if at all.

Following the 4.3 release, further improvements will be made on the BlitzGateway? API, but we will be doing our best to minimise the impact on users of the documented public methods.

For more details about this work on the Blitz Gateway, please see ​http://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/ome/wiki/OmeroPy/GatewayInfo

To summarise the changes currently planned for the 4.3 release:

All these methods are being replaced by either getObjects() or getObject():
getProject, getDataset, getScreen, getPlate, getImage, getFileAnnotation, getCommentAnnotation, getTagAnnotation, getGroup, findProject, lookupTagAnnotation

This method is being replaced by getAnnotationLinks():
listImages

All search methods are being replaced by searchObjects():
searchImages, searchDatasets, searchProjects, searchScreens, searchPlates, simpleSearch

The following delete methods are being replaced by deleteObjects():
deleteImage, deleteImages, deleteProject, deleteDataset, deleteScreen, deletePlate, simpleDelete.

[cxallan]

Moved from sprint 2011-04-07 (9)