Data Turbine Installation
Background
Data Turbine is a streaming data middleware framework that can be used to serve real-time data from a wide variety of sources (see Data Turbine page). Data Turbine support functions are included in GCE Data Toolbox distributions 3.5.0 and higher. However, users must also install the Data Turbine application (minimally rbnb.jar) and Data Turbine MATLAB Toolkit (DTMatlabTK) on their system to enable these functions. Instructions are provided below.
Installing Data Turbine
Data Turbine is a free and open source software package, and a complete installer can be downloaded from the Open Source Data Turbine (OSDT) website. Documentation and user guides are available to help with installation and getting started. Note that Data Turbine is a Java application, and requires a Java 6 or 7 JRE to run. Java installers are available here.
Note that if you only intend to retrieve data from established Data Turbine servers on other systems, you can just download the main Java program (rbnb.jar) and any necessary Java 6 or 7 JRE installers, and save rbnb.jar in the same directory as the DTMatlabTK code described below.
Installing DTMatlabTK
An improved library of MATLAB functions for inter-operating with Data Turbine, the DT MATLAB Toolkit (DTMatlabTK), was also developed by Matt Miller and Wade Sheldon as part of the NSF SI2 project in 2013. This toolkit provides low-level functions for communicating with Data Turbine servers, and high-level functions for retrieving tabular data sets from Data Turbine channels and scheduling timed data harvests. This toolkit is distributed along with the DT source code starting with version 3.3 (see https://github.com/cycronix/dataturbine). The relevant functions are included in the /Source/Matlab_Toolkit/Core and /Source/Matlab_Toolkit/Extras directories of the Zip archive.
Enabling DTMatlabTK in the GCE Data Toolbox
Both Data Turbine and the DTMatlabTK library must be installed and added to the MATLAB search path to enable Data Turbine support in the GCE Data Toolbox. The simplest approach is to copy the main Data Turbine .jar file (rbnb.jar) and the DTMatlabTK .m files to the /extensions directory of the GCE Data Toolbox, or to the default MATLAB user directory (first entry display when 'path' is typed in the command window). You can also use the MATLAB path management dialog (e.g. File > Set Path from the command window) to add the original installation directories to the MATLAB search path.
These functions will then be detected automatically when the Dataset Editor is opened and the Data Turbine data mining dialog (File > Import Data > Data Turbine Channel Data (WWW)) will be enabled.
Testing Data Turbine Integration
The easiest way to test whether Data Turbine support is properly enabled on your system is to start up local server instance and retrieve basic metrics data into the GCE Data Toolbox, i.e.
1. open a command window (Windows) or terminal window (Linux, MacOS) on your computer
2. type: java -jar PATH_TO_THE_FILE/rbnb.jar
(Windows example: java -jar "C:\Users\Name\Desktop\rbnb.jar", where Name is your username)
(Mac/Linux example: java -jar /Users/root/Desktop/rbnb.jar)
3. leave the command or terminal window open (important) and launch the MATLAB application if necessary
4. start the GCE Data Toolbox help
5. click on the 'Dataset Editor' button to open an editor window
6. open the Data Turbine import dialog using 'File > Import Data > Data Turbine Channel Data (WWW)'
7. enter 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1:3333' in the 'Server' field
8. click on the '?' button next to the 'Source' field, select '_Metrics' in the list, and click 'OK'
9. leave 'Start Date' blank, and leave 'Time offset(h)' and 'Days/Request' as 0
10. select <none> for 'Template'
11. click on 'Proceed' to retrieve data from the default system metrics channel
If a data set including columns Data, ArchiveDataBytes, CacheDataBytes, etc. is retrieved, then everything is set up properly and you can now retrieve data from any network-accessible Data Turbine server. If errors are reported at any step, review the installation and testing instructions using the links above
12. close the command or terminal window to shut down the Data Turbine server instance
