Aviator

Aviator monitors operational metrics of online bioinformatics web servers to support reliability assessment of computational resources.

Key Features:

• Literature-mining-based general module: Autonomously checks 9,417 websites twice daily for operational status and captures frontend and backend response times, required RAM, webpage size, security certificates, and the presence of analytic tools and trackers embedded within web pages.
• Manually curated module: Provides curated monitoring, offers API snippets compatible with Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript, actively queries relevant APIs twice daily, and issues automated notifications if anomalies are detected.
• Captured metrics: Records frontend and backend response times, required RAM, webpage size, security certificate details, and embedded analytics/trackers for each monitored web server.
• Data warehouse: Stores the comprehensive monitoring data for subsequent analysis of performance and stability.
• Automatic testing support: Supplies API snippets and mechanisms to support automatic testing of web service functions.

Scientific Applications:

• Reliability assessment: Evaluate the reliability of self-developed or third-party web-based bioinformatics tools to avoid incorporating unstable components into research workflows or educational materials.
• Pre-use verification: Verify the operational status of specific web services planned for use to reduce the risk of disruptions in analyses.
• Resource surveillance: Monitor stability and performance trends of online bioinformatics resources over time for maintenance and meta-research purposes.

Methodology:

Autonomously check 9,417 websites twice daily; capture frontend/backend response times, required RAM, webpage size, security certificate information, and presence of analytics/trackers; store collected metrics in a data warehouse; curated module queries relevant APIs twice daily and issues automated anomaly notifications; provide API snippets for Perl, PHP, Python, and JavaScript and support automatic testing of web service functions.