SunPy Database Browser Final Report

It gives me great pleasure to write this post about the SunPy Database Browser, that I developed as part of the Google Summer of Code'14 for the organization SunPy. It has been a wonderful and I feel delighted to say that the first version is ready. I have developed the plug-in as a plug-in with Ginga, an astronomical FITS file viewer, so as to enable side-by-side viewing and manipulation of Solar FITS files. The plug-in is wrapped as a Python package 'ginga-sunpy' which can be easily installed by the following steps:

1. First install Ginga if you don't have it already.
2. Download the code (or clone this repo).
3. To install
   
   • For general use, from the ginga-sunpy directory run python setup.py install.
   • For developers, from the ginga-sunpy directory run python setup.py develop.
   • Run ginga-sunpy from your command-line and Ginga will open with the SunPy plug-in running.
   
   The following database parameters are needed by the plug-in to connect to the database:

• Driver: Database name such as mysql, oracle, postgresql, etc., and driver the name of a DBAPI, such as psycopg2, pyodbc, cx_oracle, etc.”
• Database Name: Name of the database to which to connect. (Can also specify the path to the database here)
• User: Username of the user
• Password: Password of the User

Optional Parameters

1. Default Wavelength Unit
2. Set Database as default

Actions

1. Connect: Connects to a database based on passed arguments. Defaults to sqlite:///sunpydb
2. Add file to Database: Adds new entries to database based on the selected file from a File Dialog Box
3. View Database: Opens a new tab with tabular display of database entries
4. Open Database: Connects to a sqlite database selected from a File Dialog Box
5. Commit to Database: Commits the new entries added, changes made to the database

Database Table

• Entries are displayed one-per row
  

• The following attributes are displayed

  • id
  • path
  • observation_time_start
  • observation_time_end
  • instrument
  • min_wavelength
  • max_wavelength
  • is_starred

• On clicking on any database entry's row, the FITS file associated to that entry opens in Ginga
  
• Can display only the starred entires by selecting the 'Show starred entries only' checkbox below the table
  
  The repository can be found at  https://github.com/sunpy/ginga-sunpy