Welcome to NCSA Brown Dog - A Science Driven Data Transformation Service

If you are here - you must be ready to try our newly release Beta Version of Brown Dog. If you haven't signed up and created an account, go here to create an account and get started!

http://browndog.ncsa.illinois.edu/

While you were there - did you see some buttons on the left?

That is a great place to begin using Brown Dog.  See the button for BDFiddle? Like other "fiddle" type environments such as JSfiddle, ScalaFiddle and Python Fiddle, BDFiddle provides an easy way for non-programmers to generate and play around with the Brown Dog DTS as well as obtain code "snippets" needed to get metadata and/or convert data from within their own applications.  Brown Dog provides snippets in Python, Matlab, R, bash, Javascript, and generates Jupyter Notebook's for you to use when sharing your own work and documentation.

Click on that button to try it out (you will need your user name and password to log in):

https://browndog.ncsa.illinois.edu/bdfiddle/      

Click here for a guide on using BDFiddle: BDFiddle

What tools are available to use with Brown Dog?

See the button for BD Catalog? The Brown Dog Tools Catalog is a community resource for publishing data transformation tools and making them available for use by the scientific community.  We already have a selection of tools (53 as of the beginning of July 2017) which are already available for your use.  Go take a look! Click the button or follow the link here:

https://browndog.ncsa.illinois.edu/toolscatalog/

Want to use more of the advanced features of Brown Dog directly?

The Brown Dog Command Line Interface (BD-CLI) gives you an easy to use interface to the Brown Dog DTS. It talks to various components of Brown Dog through its API. It can be used to do operations like file conversions and extractions as well as indexing and search.

Click here for a guide on using BD-CLI: BD CLI

How about integrating Brown Dog into your daily Windows use?

Do you have files that are in older formats that you are not able to open anymore?  Install the Brown Dog Window Client.  You will be able to download the installer from the Brown Dog webpage to install the Windows client.  The client will modify your Windows file manager so you convert local files by simply right clicking on the file and a Brown Dog option will show in the selection box which will allow you to choose an output format you are able to work with.  This Windows Tool will also index/search local folders by similarly right clicking on a folder to index then search its contents based on extracted metadata.

Click here for a guide on using BD Windows Client: BD Windows Client

What about some more Brown Dog related tools to use?

Click on the Clients button to see an overview of a wide variety of applications that can build on top of and leverage the Brown Dog DTS in order to allow you to better work with and explore difficult datasets, files, and collections.  The listed clients, libraries, and community tools are some of the examples the Brown Dog team has been building or supporting during the development of the project.  A wide variety of applications can then build on top of and leverage these in order to allow you to better work with and explore difficult datasets, files, and collections. 

https://browndog.ncsa.illinois.edu/clients.html

API Documentation

If you are interested in interfacing directly with Brown Dog look here for the APIs available:

https://bd-api.ncsa.illinois.edu/docs/

Want to get involved?

Brown Dog is extensible so new tools (extractors and converters) can be packaged and contributed by you into the Brown Dog Tools Catalog. You as a contributor will be noted in the tool and receive credit for contributions.  All community members can have tools preserved for future use and get to watch as their ideas are utilized and incorporated into new concepts.  And it is Open Source.

This is a quick overview on how it is done: Adding Tools

Have Questions?

Mail us here: browndog-suppoart@ncsa.illinois.edu