Shiny Server

In recent years, the free software R has become the quasi standard for statistical computing and graphics. At the same time, web-based applications are getting more and more important for data access, presentations and services. The R package „Shiny” (shiny.rstudio.com) offers a simple web application framework for R and enables scientists to directly use their R skills and R scripts for interactive web applications (shinyuser-showcase).

In this project we evaluated shiny applications ...

1. to facilitate WSL internal workflow - for instance with small interactive data portals,
2. to provide web applications generally accessible from outside WSL, and
3. to provide web applications with access control for external partners or clients.

Result: Shiny apps have proved to be useful and some are already used on a regular basis by WSL colleagues, research partners, and contracting authorities. The costs and amount of time for installation and maintenance of a shiny server are low, and the free and open source version of Shiny Server was sufficient for the apps tested so far.

Colleagues at WSL are welcome to join our regular "Shiny Coffee" and to test their own shiny applications on one of the virtual test servers.