Catena/eRAMS 2.0 Content Management

Catena provides a command line utility to support data storage and collaboration, called Catena CLI. Using Catena CLI commands users can create, read, update, and delete data associated with any Catena project.

Catena CLI is still under development, so this specification should be interpreted with the awareness that these APIs and documentation are subject to change.

How it Works

Most modeling applications require a number of software libraries, runtimes, compilers, configurations and data specific to a particular application. Maintaining arrays of physical servers, each configured for one specific application, is expensive and inefficient.

Catena abstracts modeling applications into projects, which comprise two main components: software and data (see Figure 1). Software (and software dependencies) are run with Catena using containers, managed with Docker. Software containers have the advantage of being isolated from the rest of the physical machine, meaning they can be run independently in both hosted and local environments. They can also be scaled dynamically and horizontally using popular container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes. Every Catena application is designed to be run within a single Docker container, providing the flexibility to be run on most operating systems with a single command.

Figure 1: Catena CLI workflow

To support flexibility in binding and sharing data with a project, Catena provides a service called Catena Hub where users can create, download, update, and delete data associated with a project.

Use Catena CLI to create a workspace, using the command below:

$ catena pull my-project # creates a local Catena workspace

A workspace serves as an isolated instance of a project and can be hosted on a local computer, on-premises server, or a public cloud provider, as long as Docker is installed and running.

Once a workspace is created, start a session to begin interacting with the Catena project using the command below:

$ catena run my-project # creates a session for the Catena workspace

Changes made during the session will only persist in the workspace. This provides the advantage of being able to test and modify a project in a preliminary state, without changing the state of the project.

To save changes in a project, the user must upload their changes back to Catena Hub using the command below:

$ catena push my_project # sends changes to the workspace to the Catena project

Getting Started

To begin working with Catena CLI, you must install Docker. Documentation for installing Docker is provided here.

Running Catena CLI

Catena CLI can be installed by downloading the binary executable (Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows operating systems will be supported).

• catena-linux-amd64
• Mac OSX: coming soon...
• Windows: coming soon...

Run the executable, available above, to get a list of commands you can use to work with Catena projects. An example output is provided below:

$ $ ./catena

Catena is a CLI interface to manage applications.

Usage:
  catena [command]

Available Commands:
  help        Help about any command
  login       logs into catena
  logout      logs out from catena
  run         runs a catena application.
  version     Provides the catena version.

Flags:
      --config string   config files (default is $HOME/.cli.yaml)
  -h, --help            help for catena

Use "catena [command] --help" for more information about a command.