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General Questions About IDAS

What is IDAS?

The Interactive Data Analytics Service (IDAS) is provided by the University of Iowa Information Technology Services - Research Services (ITS-RS). IDAS supports large-scale and collaborative data analytics using interactive tools such as RStudio for R and Jupyter Notebook for Python, R, and Julia. Users will benefit from High from High Performance Computing (HPC) resources while resources while performing their interactive data analysis tasks. 

What are Python, R, and Julia?

Python, R, and Julia are among the most popular programming languages for data analysis. Python and Julia are general-purpose languages, and R is a language for statistical computing and graphics. Python, R, and Julia are open-source projects and free for everyone to use, although some companies provide commercial support and/or extensions for their customers. While Python, R, and Julia share many important features as high-level, open-source programming languages, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses from a data-science perspective.

What is interactive data analytics?

Interactiveness is one of the key features of data analytics. Due to the nature of data analysis, it is challenging to write perfect code on the first try. You write and run some code, see the output, and then based on that output write and run another code, see the output, so on and so forth, until you get the final, satisfactory outcome of your data analysis. That process is called interactive data analytics. 

What are Jupyter Notebook and JupyterHub?

Python support iPython, which stands for interactive Python, for interactive scripting in a shell environment. The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application built on top of iPython. It allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. Uses of the Jupyter Notebook include data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and much more. The Jupyter Notebook supports not only Python but also many of the other commonly-used programming languages such as R, Java, and Julia.

JupyterHub is a server version of the Jupyter Notebook for multiple users. It can be used in a class of students, a corporate data science group or scientific research group. It is a multi-user Hub that spawns, manages, and proxies multiple instances of the single-user Jupyter notebook server.

What is RStudio?

RStudio is a free and open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for R. RStudio Desktop is a standalone desktop application that works with the version of R you have installed on your local computer. RStudio Server is a Linux server application for multiple users that provides a web-based interface to the version of R running on the server. 

Okay! You've convinced me. I want to use IDAS. How do I start?

We are truly glad that you want to give IDAS a try.

• To start, you will need to request an IDAS account.
• After your account is approved, please follow the instructions here to access IDAS for research use or the instructions here to access IDAS for class use.
• Find more information about common tasks in IDAS.
• If you are curious about our updates, visit our change log.

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If you are new to IDAS or interactive data analytics, please take a look at the information on this page: Introduction to Interactive Data Analytics for New Users.

What tools are available for use in IDAS?

IDAS currently supports RStudio for R, and Jupyter Notebook for Python, R, and Julia. A command line interface is also available. Research users can mount their Argon homes and LSS shares in IDAS.

How do I request an account?

Please see the information on Requesting An IDAS Account.

Who is eligible to use IDAS?

Current University of Iowa faculty, staff, and students can request to use IDAS for research and teaching.

Is there any fee to use IDAS?

There is currently no fee to use IDAS for current University of Iowa faculty, staff, and students.

I'm new to Jupyter Hub and/or RStudio. How do I use IDAS?

Please see the information on Using IDAS.

Are my data backed up on IDAS?

Data on IDAS are NOT backed up. Please regularly download your data, codes, and other files from your IDAS account to your own device. 

What other computing services can be used with IDAS?

Research users can mount their Argon homes and LSS shares in IDAS. Once you have a research account, you can choose to mount your Argon home or LSS shares when you log in to IDAS. For more information about spawning an IDAS research instance, please see Accessing IDAS for Research Use.

Can I connect to Research Data Storage Service (RDSS) from IDAS?

No, RDSS is not accessible from IDAS. 

Is IDAS approved to be used with restricted data?

IDAS is currently permitted to be used with Public and University/Internal data only. Please see the Data Classification Guide to IT Services for more information, including definitions of different data types and a table of IT services and the types of data permitted with them. 

Whom do I contact if I have further questions?

Please reach out to Cody B Johnson and Giang Rudderham at research-computing@uiowa.edu.  Support is generally available Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.