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NOTE: The Competition services are still under development and are not yet available on Synapse.

Overview

The Competition API is designed to support open-access Synapse data analysis and modeling challenges. This framework provides tools for administrators to create new competitions in Synapse and manage the users and data objects associated with a competition. A competition owner can control access to competition resources and registration, as well as track user participation and evaluate submitted models. This API will support user-facing interfaces to monitor competitions including activity notifications and on-demand scoring and leaderboarding.

Data Models

Synapse Competitions are constructed around three primary objects: Competition, Participant, and Submission. These objects are defined by eponymous JSON schema files in the Synapse Repository Services.

Competition
Object representing a Synapse Competition

ID - unique ID for the Competition
eTag - optimistic concurrency flag; changes with each update
ownerID - principal ID of the owner of the Competition
name
description
contentSource - ID of the data source (e.g. entity) for the Competition (string)
status - enum describing the state of the Competition, one of: PLANNED, OPEN, CLOSED, COMPLETED

Participant
Immutable object to represent a single user participating in a Competition. Competitions can have many users, and users can participate in many Competitions.

ownerID - principal ID of the Participant
competitionID
createdOn - join date

Submission
Immutable object to represent an entity submission to a Competition. A participant can create many Submissions for a given Competition.

ID - unique ID for the Submission
name
ownerID - principal ID of the Submission owner
competitionID
entityID - ID of the submitted entity
version - specific entity version
createdOn - submission date

SubmissionStatus
Object to track the status and score of a specific Submission. This object is generated at the time of submission, and can be modified by Competition administrators.

submissionID
eTag - optimistic concurrency flag; changes with each update
status - enum describing the state of the Submission, one of: OPEN, CLOSED, SCORED, INVALID
score - numerical score for this Submission (double between 0 and 1)

REST API

Competition

URL	HTTP Type	Description
/competition	POST	Create a new Competition
/competition/{competitionId}	GET	Get a Competition
/competition/{competitionId}	PUT	Update a Competition
/competition/{competitionId}	DELETE	Delete a Competition
/competition	GET	Batch Get Competitions (Paginated) Optional request parameters: limit (long), offset (long)
/competition/count	GET	Get the number of Competitions
/competition/name/{name}	GET	Find a Competition by name

Participant

URL	HTTP Type	Description
/competition/{competitionId}/participant	POST	Join as a Participant in a Competition
/competition/{competitionId}/participant/{principalId}	POST	Add another user as a Participant in a Competition. Requires admin rights on the Competition.
/competition/{competitionId}/participant/{principalId}	GET	Get a Participant
/competition/{competitionId}/participant/{principalId}	DELETE	Delete a Participant
/competition/{competitionId}/participant/	GET	Batch get Participants for a given Competition (Paginated)
/competition/{competitionId}/participant/count	GET	Get the number of Participants in a given Competition

Submission

URL	HTTP Type	Description
/competition/submission	POST	Create a new Submission. (and corresponding SubmissionStatus object)
/competition/submission/{submissionId}	GET	Get a Submission
/competition/submission/{submissionId}/status	GET	Get the status of a Submission
/competition/submission/{submissionId}/status	PUT	Update the status of a Submission. Requires admin rights on the Competition
/competition/submission/{submissionId}	DELETE	Delete a Submission. Requires admin rights on the Competition.
/competition/{compId}/submission	GET	Batch get Submissions for a given Competition (Paginated). Requires admin rights on the Competition. Can be filtered by SubmissionStatusEnum. Optional request parameters: status (String)
/competition/{compId}/submission/count	GET	Get the number of Submissions for a given Competition

cURL Examples

Competition

Create a Competition

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -H Content-Type:application/json -d '{
    "status":"PLANNED",
    "description":"description",
    "name":"my first competition",
    "contentSource":"contentSource"
}' https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition

Get a Competition

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json 
'https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/1588317'

Update a Competition

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -H Content-Type:application/json -X PUT -d '{
    "id":"1588317",
    "createdOn":"2013-01-16T16:30:56.727Z",
    "etag":"eed22bca-d88e-4b4a-8b1a-35dca7b7b8db",
    "status":"OPEN",
    "description":"description",
    "ownerId":"1588313",
    "name":"my first competition",
    "contentSource":"contentSource"
}' https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/1588317

Delete a Competition

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:okxkSRyl3v0iIf0eutQfXA00 -H Accept:application/json -X DELETE 
'https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/1588317'

Participant

Create a Participant

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -H Content-Type:application/json -d '{
    "ownerId":"123456"
}' https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/987654/participant

Delete a Participant

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -X DELETE 
'https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/1588317/participant/1588313'

Submission

Create a Submission

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -H Content-Type:application/json -d '{
    "competitionId":"1588317",
    "entityId":"1588315",
    "versionNumber":"1",
    "name":"some-name"
}' https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/submission

Update a SubmissionStatus

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -H Accept:application/json -H Content-Type:application/json -X PUT -d '{
    "id":"1589914",
    "modifiedOn":"2013-01-18T21:43:18.897Z",
    "etag":"13c88b1a-662c-4dd6-bb56-3976566516f7",
    "status":"SCORED",
    "score":0.42
}' https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/submission/1589914/status

Delete a Submission

curl -i -k -H sessionToken:dPF2TqGUq121PR36AwJhXw00 -H Accept:application/json -X DELETE 
'https://repo-staging.prod.sagebase.org/repo/v1/competition/submission/1589912'

Example Workflow

The following is a proposed workflow for interacting with the Competition Services. Please note that some components are still under development.

User Perspective

Find a Synapse Competition
Sign up as a Participant
Download relevant Synapse Entities referenced in Competition
Submit a Synapse entity to the Competition
Track status of personal Submissions and view global competition status/leaderboard
Earn achievements for participation / success

Owner/Admin Perspective

Create a Synapse Competition
1. Fill in details, attach relevant Synapse entities
2. Specify access requirements
3. Specify open/close dates
Listen for Submissions (using messaging service)
1. Download unscored Submissions
2. Perform scoring
3. Push scores back to each SubmissionStatus
Track user participation and publish competition status/leaderboard
Award achievements for user participation / success

Planned Improvements

The following features are planned but not yet implemented.

Banned user lists
Banned users should be prohibited from participating in one or more Competitions, and any Submissions by a banned user should be isolated from the general populations of Submissions.
Customizable Amazon Simple Notification Services messaging tools
Competition administrators should have tools to configure a selective Amazon instance to listen for messages pertaining to Competitions which they own. These messages should be sent to a queue dedicated to Competitions.
Immutable copies of submitted Entities
Once an Entity is submitted to a Competition, a static copy of that Entity should become the property of the Competition administration.
Administrator lists for Competitions
Competitions should support administration by multiple users (rather than just the Competition owner). These admin lists should function as a lightweight ACL of sorts.
Multi-author Submissions
Competitions should support team Submissions, where more than one Synapse user claims authorship of a given Submission.
Pagination support for fetching Participants and Submissions
Currently the API supports fetching all Participants or all Submissions for a given Competition. To support high-volume Competitions, pagination shoudl be supported on these requests.