A Review of Containerization for Interactive and Reproducible Analysis

TL;DR

This paper reviews how containerization and code notebooks together improve the sharing, interactivity, and reproducibility of computational analyses in scientific research.

Contribution

It highlights the combined use of containerization and code notebooks as a novel approach to enhance reproducibility and accessibility of computational analyses.

Findings

Containerization fully encapsulates analysis environments.

Code notebooks improve interaction with analyses.

Combined technologies significantly enhance reproducibility.

Abstract

In recent decades the analysis of data has become increasingly computational. Correspondingly, this has changed how scientific and statistical work is shared. For example, it is now commonplace for underlying analysis code and data to be proffered alongside journal publications and conference talks. Unfortunately, sharing code faces several challenges. First, it is often difficult to take code from one computer and run it on another. Code configuration, version, and dependency issues often make this challenging. Secondly, even if the code runs, it is often hard to understand or interact with the analysis. This makes it difficult to assess the code and its findings, for example, in a peer review process. In this review we describe the combination of two computing technologies that help make analyses shareable, interactive, and completely reproducible. These technologies are (1) analysis containerization, which leverages virtualization to fully encapsulate analysis, data, code and dependencies into an interactive and shareable format, and (2) code notebooks, a literate programming format for interacting with analyses. The fusion of these two technologies offers significant advantages over using either individually. This review surveys how the combination enhances the accessibility and reproducibility of code, analyses, and ideas.