[ensembl-dev] Manual curation tools

[Marc Hoeppner]

Dear EnsEMBL list,

I am currently trying my luck again with the gene build pipeline - it's 
getting there and I will probably have a few more questions soon - but 
one thing I am missing is a tool for inspecting the different outputs 
and progress of the pipeline graphically. The documentation suggests 
Apollo as a useful tool, but I had very mixed results using it in 
existing production databases (like human, chicken, pig). Specifically, 
it seems to have some problems with some not-so-recent updates in the 
database schema (like the gene_stable_id table, which I think was 
deprecated?) and randomly hangs when loading features. Not sure if I was 
just unlucky or whether this is being looked into?

Otterlace seems to be an attractive alternative, but I think that one is 
designed to only work within EnsEMBL/Sanger? Any way around that and 
adopt it to my local setup?

I guess my questions is what other people are using - and if there is 
nothing else out there that can talk to an EnsEMBL core DB, what I could 
try to get either of the two options above to work properly.

Cheers,

Marc