Guaiaca – a software tool for supporting the use of scientific applications designed for data analysis – part I: execution assistant

Abstract

The aim of this work is to develop a software tool that provides a user-friendly graphical interface of generic and configurable design in order to ease the researcher’s tasks in data manipulation and analysis. Two primary targets have influenced the design: data preparation for analysis in animal breeding programs and usability increase for those applications that perform important analysis methods, but interact with users only through text files and command lines. The Guaiaca tool was designed as a “utility belt” in the form of two integrated assistants, and it can be combined with multiple analysis applications. This tool offers facilities to: (a) collect, manipulate, and reorganize data; (b) organize, register, and retrieve analyses through descriptors; and (c) prepare and activate analysis processes. Guaiaca’s Execution Assistant module is described in this paper, where is also emphasized the parameters to configure, the main data structures to maintain, and the form of the relationship between its generic interface and combined analysis applications. The generic interface has been customized and validated for the peculiarities of two applications, WOMBAT (mixed models) and INTERGEN (Bayesian models). Several data analyses were performed with the interface support to prove its generality and ease of installation, configuration and operation. Data sets from 5,726 quails in a breeding program were used with these applications. Use of the integrated Guaiaca-WOMBAT application is illustrated with an analysis example, prepared and visualized on the Guaiaca tool and executed by WOMBAT. The Beta version of the Guaiaca tool for Windows is available free of charge to the scientific community and can be obtained at http://www.ufpel.edu.br/~gil.medeiros/guaiaca.