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CCD Annotations for Cytoscape

This app aims to bring CCD annotations to Cytoscape.

Requirements

  • Cytoscape 3.5 or greater
  • Java 1.8
  • Maven 3

Build

mvn clean package (add option -DskipTests to skip unit tests)

Install

Cytoscape Apps Directory (Recommended)

  1. Build the app
  2. Locate the jar file ccd-annotations-cytoscape-X.X.X.jar in the target/ directory
  3. Locate your Cytoscape installation directory ($CYTOSCAPE_HOME)
  4. Copy the jar file to the $CYTOSCAPE_HOME/apps/ directory
  5. If Cytoscape is open, you must restart it for the changes to take effect.

Cytoscape App Manager

  1. Build the app
  2. Open Cytoscape
  3. Open the App Manager via Apps -> App Manager...
  4. Click Install from File...
  5. Locate the build directory and select the jar file ccd-annotations-cytoscape-X.X.X.jar from the target/ subdirectory
  6. Restart Cytoscape for the changes to take effect

CCD Annotations Guide

Table of Contents

Project Goal

The goal of this plugin is to extend Cytoscape's annotating capabilities. In detail, by using this plugin a user is able to connect annotations with network components. Also, the user can search, filter, and sort annotations based on fundamental criteria. CCD-annotation-plugin follows a dual level notion of an annotations: the Visualization and the Semantic view. The Visualization view is responsible for rendering an annotation on a network and is mostly handled by Cytoscape's visualization engine. The Semantic view is responsible for annotation, search, filter actions, in agreement with Cytoscape's OSGi specifications. The aforementioned views appear in the storage engine of the plugin and on import/export functionality of Cytoscape.

Features

CCD Annotations Panel

The CCD Annotations app provides a panel in Cytoscape's left Control Panel. This panel contains most of the functionality of the app, including creation, search, and union/intersection.

Creation

Creating an annotation is done in the Create tab of the CCD Annotations panel. Users can select from a list of pre-existing annotations in which they provide the value or create a new annotation. Once an annotation is chosen and a value is provided, select a set of nodes and/or edges from the network and click the Create button to generate the annotation. At least one network component is required. When a new annotation is created, it is positioned relative to its associated graph components using their average location. Annotations can be moved, but will be re-positioned if Automatic CCD Annotation Relayout is enabled.

Search

Searching for annotations is done in the Search tab of the CCD Annotations panel. Users can search via annotation name and description, then choose to further filter the results list by value. Clicking on a search result will highlight and select the associated graph components. Additionally, the search scope can be narrowed from all of the nodes and edges of a graph to a sub-graph of selected components. Simply choose the Selected option and select the desired components.

Union and Intersection

When searching for annotations over a subset of nodes and/or edges, users can choose whether they want the search results to return the union (default) of annotations across the set of selected components or the intersection.

Relayouting

Newly created annotations are placed relative to the components which they are annotating. When a network component is moved, associated annotations are re-layouted to maintain a position relative to the component. This is called Automatic Annotation Relayouting. This can be enabled or disabled by clicking the Automatic CCD Annotation Relayout button in the Layout menu. When disabled, users can still have their annotations relayouted by clicking Layout -> Relayout CCD Annotations.

Import and Export

The CCD Annotations plugin works by importing or exporting annotated networks. It supports importing and exporting of annotations using Cytoscape's built-in Cytoscape JSON (cyjs) file format. When a user exports a network using this file format, annotations will be included. Another user can then import this network from the cyjs file and view the CCD annotations. Users without the app can still view CCD annotations, but they will not have access to relative layouting and other features provided by the app. For more information regarding our additions to the cyjs file format, see the Cyjs File Format section of Technical Details. The plugin does not support persistence of session objects as this would lead to violation of the OSGi standard, under which Cytoscape is built on.

Technical Details

Database

The plugin uses HSQLDB (version 2.4) to accommodate main-memory storage of network components and CCD annotations. All data are stored in main-memory for improved performance, and for each loaded Network, a different database is created. By the time a network session is stopped, HSQLDB drops the main memory database. Therefore, it is the user's responsibility to make changes persistent by exporting a CCD-annotated network to a .cyjs file.

CCD-Database Schema

The database schema consists of the following tables that represent Strong entities in the schema (additional details can be found in edu.pitt.cs.admt.cytoscape.annotations.db.AnnotationSchema):

  • Node (suid INTEGER)
  • Edge (suid INTEGER, source INTEGER, destination INTEGER)
  • Annotation (id UUID, name VARCHAR(32), type ENUM(bool, char, int, float, string), description VARCHAR(64))

Each network strong entity (i.e., Node, Edge, Annotation) has an identifying attribute: for nodes and edges it is the suid field (as defined in the cyjs input file), and for annotations is the id. For annotations' id a UUID data type is selected to preserve the uniqueness of annotations generated by multiple collaborators.

In addition, there exist two relation tables between Strong entities:

  • ANNOT_TO_NODE (a_id UUID, cy_a_id UUID, suid INTEGER, value LONGVARBINARY)
  • ANNOT_TO_EDGE (a_id UUID, cy_a_id UUID, suid INTEGER, value LONGVARBINARY)

The a_id field is a foreign key to the Annotation.id field and the cy_a_id is the UUID generated by Cytoscape (used for visualization purposes). The suid is a foreign key to the corresponding entity's id (either Node or Edge) and value holds a value for that particular annotation (it is optional).

CCD cyjs File Format

The CCD Annotations app adds two attributes to the cyjs file format, both prefixed by __CCD. These additions allow the app to support additional annotation information and annotation-to-component associations, which is not provided by Cytoscape.

The __CCD_Annotations field, inside the data attribute, holds a list of all CCD Annotations that have been created on the network. Each CCD Annotation has four fields:

  • uuid - a unique identifier
  • name - the name (or class) of the annotation
  • type - the type accepted by this annotation when supplying a value
  • description - a description of the annotation

This list supplies the set of annotation names available when creating a new annotation instance. Newly added annotations are appended to this list upon export of the network. Similarly, the standard cyjs file format includes an __Annotations attribute that lists every Cytoscape annotation found on the network.

The __CCD_Annotation_Set attribute can be found for every node and edge of the network. The elements list holds the set of all nodes and edges. The purpose of the __CCD_Annotation_Set is to provide the association(s) between instances of CCD Annotations and their visual representation on the network – the built-in Cytoscape text annotations are used to visually display the annotation. Each item in the __CCD_Annotation_Set includes three fields:

  • a_id - the CCD Annotation ID (found in __CCD_Annotations)
  • cy_id - the Cytoscape annotation ID (found in __Annotations)
  • value - the value of the annotation instance (supplied by the creating user)

Multiple components can have an item in their __CCD_Annotation_Set with the same a_id and cy_id fields. This means that there is one visual annotation representing a single CCD Annotation that is associated with those components. This occurs whenever a user creates a new annotation on two selected components. In this case, the value will also be the same.

Cyjs Cytoscape Annotation Generation

For applications that wish to utilize CCD Annotations by creating cyjs files, our app can automatically generate Cytoscape annotations. This is done by creating CCD Annotations, adding them to the __CCD_Annotations and __CCD_Annotations_Set attributes, and either setting the cy_id field to some desired UUID or leaving it blank. It is important to note that if the cy_id field is set, then it must not exist in the __Annotations list for our app to generate a Cytoscape annotation for it. If the ID already exists, then the existing Cytoscape annotation will be used.

When the app reads the __CCD_Annotations_Set list(s), it will generate Cytoscape annotations in the following manner:

  1. All annotations with the same a_id value and a blank cy_id will be mapped to the same Cytoscape annotation; i.e., one visual annotation will be created per a_id
  2. All annotations with the same a_id value and the same cy_id value will be mapped to the same Cytoscape annotation; i.e., one visual annotation will be created per a_id and cy_id pair
  3. All annotations with a unique cy_id value, regardless of a_id, will be mapped to a unique Cytoscape annotation; i.e., one visual annotation will be created per unique cy_id

In this way, flexibility in Cytoscape annotation generation is provided to users who wish to utilize CCD Annotations via cyjs files without having to provide all of the required information to create a Cytoscape annotation.

For an example of a cyjs file that requires Cytoscape annotation generation, see sample_files/ExampleMissingCytoAnno.cyjs.

Internal Overview

Annotation Semantic View

The CCD Annotations for Cytoscape plugin (ccd_annot) is designed to support two types of CCD annotations:

  1. holistic : An annotation that refers to the whole network.
  2. specific : An annotation that exists by referencing one or more network components (i.e., nodes, edges). Specific annotations can have values associated with each one of their associated network components, and the value types supported are: boolean, char, int, float, and string.

Both holistic and specific CCD annotations are declared through an annotation class that contains the following fields:

  • UUID id: unique identifier
  • string name: a 32 character name
  • string type: a description for the value type, which can take a value of bool, char, int, float, string (optional for holistic annotations)
  • string description

By the time an annotation class is registered, multiple annotation instances can be instantiated for different network components. An annotation instance requires some additional information:

  • int suid: unique identifier of a network component (i.e., node or edge id)
  • UUID a_id: the id of the annotation class it is an instance of
  • UUID cy_a_id: a Cytoscape generated UUID for visualization purposes
  • binary value: the value for this particular instance