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BioMedIT Blog

What's new in Portal 8.2.0? 🚀

We are pleased to announce the release of BioMedIT Portal 8.2.0, which is packed with new features requested by the BioMedIT nodes, along with interface updates, improved usability, and enhanced performance.

You may find the full list of changes in the: CHANGELOG - Portal 8.2.0

New Features ✨

  • PGP Key Information: You can now view PGP key details directly in the user profile.
  • Data Providers: Additional tabs display the data transfers list for the specific Data Provider and the Data Provider users.
  • Nodes: Node users have been moved to a separate tab.
  • Projects: New “Additional Project Information” and “Services” tabs have been added, allowing for more relevant details to the project and tracking of which users have access to specific project services.

Improvements 🛠️

  • Navigation: Administration menu items have been bundled together.
  • Users in projects: Improved and clearer view of user roles within projects.
  • Inactive Users: The page displayed for users with “inactive” status who return to the portal has been improved to provide them clearer information.
  • Email Notifications:
    • No emails are sent for updates to users with minimal role.
    • Redundant emails for when users are added or deleted to projects have been removed.
    • Filenames are now included in data package emails.

Support ❤️

We thank you for your continued support and feedback. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at biomedit@sib.swiss.

The BioMedIT Central Team

What's new in sett 5.2.0? 🚀

We are excited to announce the release of sett version 5.2.0, which brings several significant enhancements designed to improve usability and streamline the encryption and transfer of data.

For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelogs:

To download the new version, please go to the download page, and choose your distribution.

Simplified encryption and transfer GUI ✨

The “Encrypt” and “Transfer” tabs have been combined into a single tab, making the interface cleaner and easier to navigate. You can still choose to encrypt files first, and transfer them later.

BioMedIT Portal Integration 🔐

Users can now authenticate through the BioMedIT Portal, unlocking additional features:

  • When creating a package, you can now select eligible approved data transfer requests from a drop-down menu, rather than manually entering the DTR number.
  • For S3/HTTPS transfers, credentials are automatically retrieved—no need to switch back to the Portal to fetch them.

OpenPGP key expiration date 📅

It is now possible to set an expiration date when generating an OpenPGP certificate both from sett GUI and sett CLI.

Additional settings ⚙️

The “Settings” tab of sett GUI now displays more information, such as the location of your public and private key stores.

CLI for simultaneous decryption and transfer 📬

Users can now decrypt packages from an S3 object store by specifying the corresponding arguments.

Performance and other improvements 🏎️

Additionally, this version includes several bug fixes, as well as security and performance improvements.

Support ❤️

We thank you for your continued support and feedback. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at biomedit@sib.swiss.

The BioMedIT Central Team

Porting sett from Python to Rust

sett stands for “Secure Encryption and Transfer Tool” and is an application that facilitates and automates data packaging, encryption, and transfer in BioMedIT.

Over the past two years BIWG has ported sett from Python to a more modern technology stack, composed of Rust and Svelte. This port was performed because the Python implementation was showing some design limitations, which made the life of developers and users difficult. The list of limitations included:

  • A somewhat complicated installation process, requiring multiple steps and the usage of the command line;
  • A requirement on a local installation of gpg: a tool which is very problematic to handle programmatically, especially on some operating systems;
  • Python’s performances: good, but definitely a bottleneck when compared to the performance of a compiled language like Rust can provide;
  • A Python-based GUI where implementing complex behaviors and styling can be challenging.

Before diving deeper, it’s worth mentioning that the transition was carried out gradually. The Rust codebase was initially designed as a Rust library with Python bindings, which allowed BIWG to gradually replace Python core features—i.e. encryption, transfer, decryption, key management—with their Rust equivalents. These Rust-based core features have been running in production since months, nicely encapsulated in a Python-based shell. The last steps of this port were carried out more recently, when:

  • On 22nd April 2024, the first Rust-only version was released both for the GUI and the CLI;
  • On 30th June 2024, the Python version was discontinued.

sett-gui-architecture

Usability improvements

  • Simplified installation process. Both the CLI and the GUI can be downloaded as standalone executables, with no dependency on external software;
  • More modern looking GUI, with step-by-step user guidance (i.e. fields to fill are shown to the user as needed), and simplified CLI interface (i.e. less options);
  • sett no longer relies solely on the local gpg keyring but has now an internal key store, implemented using Sequoia PGP—a utility to migrate keys from the gpg keyring to the internal key store is provided by the tool;
  • Support for parallel compression and encryption;
  • Support for simultaneous encryption and transfer;
  • Support for simultaneous decryption and transfer;
  • Use of Zstandard as default compression algorithm. Faster than the previously used gzip algorithm, and multi-threaded;
  • Authentication with BioMedIT Portal, enabling an improved user experience—e.g. auto-retrieval of S3 credentials (no need to go to portal and copy/paste credentials anymore);
  • Auto-updater for the GUI application;
  • Code signing certificates, provided by:
    • Apple, for Mac binaries;
    • SSL.com, for Windows binaries.

Performance improvements

Performances are noticeably improved, according to BIWG’s investigation and as shown in the table that follows.

Legacy sett sett 5.2.0
Encryption 50 MB/s 249 MB/s
Decryption 122 MB/s 259 MB/s

Discontinued features

  • Support for Liquidfiles as a protocol for transferring data packages;
  • Support for persisted settings/configuration for the CLI;
  • Support for SSH jump host for transfer over SFTP.

What’s coming next ?

  • An interactive terminal user interface (TUI), alternative to the classical way of running sett CLI and especially useful in the authenticated mode;
  • Support for signing public keys, useful e.g. when the users don’t rely on a central trusted authority for key verification and approval;
  • More features based on authentication with BioMedIT Portal—e.g. better feedback to the users on the status of the BioMedIT network, improved data package tracing;
  • Support for simultaneous decryption and transfer from the GUI.

Fine details on the status of present and future developments are available in BIWG roadmap.