Registration Panel

This panel allows to register (and un-register) all Biomoby entities, Data Types, Namespaces, Service Types, and Services. The recommended order is to register first Namespaces and Service Types (if you need new ones) because they do not depend on other entities, then to register data types, and finally services. If you need to un-register an entity that is used by another entity, you have to un-register first the other one.

You can start filling the form from the scratch (but Dashboard tries to remember as many values as possible from your last visit), or you can check the box Fill...when selected, and then select an existing entity in a tree. It will copy selected entity to the form fields so you can use it as a template (if you forget to change the name of the entity, registry refuses to register it, because such entity already exists there). All entities, except services, have the tree for selection directly in the registration panel. For services, you need to select a service in the Registry Browser panel.

Button Register...: Registers an entity by collecting values from all fields, and sending a registration request to the current Biomoby registry. Upon success, it automatically loads the newly registered entity to you local cache (it updates the cache, so you may get more changes than a simple addition of a new entity). The success or failure is indicated by a message in the console window.
Button Show raw XML: Shows the raw registration request. You can save it (the console has a Save icon) to a file, and next time you can register the same entity without filling the form but using:
Button Register from XML: Asks for a file and after getting it, it uses it as a registration request and does the same as the first button.

In order to unregister, use either a Unregister... button (for services), or select entity you wish to unregister, RIGHT-CLICK in the select tree, and click on unregister (for other entity types).

The Biomoby registry does not have direct ability to change entities once registered. You need to un-register them first, make a change, and register them again. Because Dashboard remembers things, it allows to do changes more easily: Select an entity (let selection fill the form fields), un-register it, make changes, and register it again.

Namespace registration

Really nothing special to say here...

Service type

Each new service type must have a parent (which is another, existing, service type). Select a type that you wish to be a parent, RIGHT-CLICK and select Add selected as a parent type - ISA. It will show it below the description field.

Data type

Each new data type must also have a parent, and may have any number of children, which are related either as HAS (the real data will have maximum one of this children) or HASA (the real data may have more of them). To add children, select them first in the tree (one by one), RIGH-CLICK and use either Add selected as a member - HASA or Add selected as a member - HAS. To assign it to a parent, do the same and select Add selected as a parent type - ISA.

The new data type is built on the left side, in a new tree, showing just the new data type. You can again remove children by RIGHT-CLICK. The same way you can (and you should) change the article name for every child. The display is still somehow buggy, try refresh, or collapse and expand the tree if it is not displayed correctly.

Service

A new service needs to have a service type - select it in a small service type tree on the left side. Fill the rest of the fields there, as well.

The service inputs and outputs are defined on the right. Add them by clicking on Add buttons. You can always remove them again by clicking a trash icon in the table. All input/output data should have an article name.

Each primary input and output has to have a data type. First select a line in the table (a line is already selected when you hit the Add button), then select a data type in a data type tree below the table. Then consider to change the automatically filled article name to something more understandable. For each data type you can add one or more namespaces from the other tree there. The added namespace can be again removed by holding CTRL and selecting them in a pop-down menu.

The secondary parameters are not too user friendly (should I improve it?). Especially the column allowed requires a comma-separated list of allowed values (if there are more values available).

There is also a button Call RDF Agent. It can be called only if the RDF endpoint is enabled and not empty. Then, it calls the current BioMoby registry with (and only with - the other text fields are ignored) an RDF signature URL - meaning that a registry agent is going to retrieve a document defined by this RDF URL and to synchronize its contents with the current registry (the document pointed by this RDF URL contains your services definitions).