Galaxy Glossary

Below you will find Galaxy's Glossary for keywords used throughout our ecosystem for easier understanding.

Administrator or Admin

Person in charge of managing a Galaxy server.

API

Acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.

Summary of an execution in Galaxy submitted by the users when a process fails. It includes the data necessary to reproduce the bug (tool version, job invocation, input parameters, standard output and error, message from the user, etc.)

BioBlend

Python library for interacting with Galaxy from the command line.

Galaxy Code of Conduct (CoC)

Set of rules outlining the norms, expected behavior, and responsibilities for interactions within the Galaxy Community.

Collaboration Fest (CoFest)

Community gatherings to work on a topic of interest.

Committers Groups

Group of Galaxy Community members with commit access to the main Galaxy repository.

Community

Group of users with a shared interest or location.

Contribution

Piece of work that adds value to the Galaxy project, some examples include creating an issue, a pull-request in GitHub, creating and/or editing a new tutorial, helping others in the Help Forum, etc.

Developer Roundtable

Biweekly informal community call where the Galaxy members have the opportunity to present their work and engage with the Galaxy developer community.

Ecosystem

Training, tools, best practice workflows, documentation, test cases, translations, infrastructure, and code within Galaxy.

Galaxy Community Conference (GCC)

Annual event that gathers community members who are interested in contributing to Galaxy's ecosystem.

Galaxy Mentor Network (GMN)

Mentoring program for the Galaxy community.

Galaxy Training Network (GTN)

Collection of tutorials developed and maintained by the Galaxy community.

GTN CoFest

Community event for anyone who would like to contribute to the GTN (new tutorials, new features, updating tutorials, testing tutorials and more) that takes place every 3 months.

Galactic News

Subscription-based Newsletter for Galaxy related news: updates, events, releases, publications and more.

Galactic Blog

List of Galaxy related blog posts from community members.

Galaxy

Free open-source web platform created for data analysis that collects lots of different tools ready-to-use. It doesn’t require any installations, only a browser.

Galaxy Project

Mature, successful research software infrastructure project behind the Galaxy software and the surrounding ecosystem. The project has a governance structure based on Working Groups, a Steering Committee and Exec Board.

Galaxy Help

Meeting place for users to ask questions related to Galaxy.

History

Galaxy workspace or current working directory displayed in the right-hand side (history panel) of the main ‘Analyze Data’ Galaxy page.

Intergalactic Utilities Commission (IUC)

Group of members of the Galaxy community that ensure best practices for the publication of tools in the Main Galaxy Tool Shed. When appropriate, the group provides guidance to Galaxy tool developers.

Intergalactic Workflow Commission (IWC)

Group of members of the Galaxy community that collect best practices, tips and tricks to maintain high quality Galaxy workflows. When appropriate, the group provides guidance to Galaxy workflow developers.

Intergalactic Data Commission (IDC)

Group of members of the Galaxy community that collect best practices, tips and tricks to maintain reference data.

Galaxy Instance

Customizable deployment of the Galaxy software that can be either private or public.

Job

Execution of a Galaxy tool to schedule or be processed by the system with no interaction by the user.

Open Source

Open Source Software is a code designed so that it is accessible to the public: Everyone can see, modify and distribute the code in a way they consider appropriate.

Paper Cuts Day

CoFests that address annoying, but easy to fix bugs ("paper cuts"). They are a 24-hour, worldwide collaborative event, dedicated to reducing irritant bugs in the Galaxy ecosystem and welcoming new contributors by guiding them through the process of fixing these and thus becoming contributors to Galaxy.

Planemo Tool Development Kit

Command-line utilities to assist in developing Galaxy and Common Workflow Language artifacts - including tools, workflows, and training materials.

Platform

Tailored version of Galaxy instance for a specific community, e.g #### https://climate.usegalaxy.eu/, https://metabolomics.usegalaxy.eu

Quota or Account Quota

Predefined maximum amount of storage per account defined by each server. Users are in control of it and may purge stored data by themselves.

Galaxy Server

See Galaxy Instance.

Galaxy Community Hub

The home base collecting all the resources relevant to the Galaxy community.

Training Infrastructure as a Service (TIaaS)

Service provided by some public Galaxy instances, which allows a private queue in the server for training. The jobs run preferentially in the private queue instead of the regular one. TIaaS also provides a dashboard for trainers to follow and monitor the progress of their students.

Tool

The fundamental building blocks for analyses in a Galaxy Instance, consisting of a command-line runnable code and its Tool Wrapper.