It is a well-known fact, that the greatest ambit for a topological group $G$ is the Samuel compactification of $G$ with respect to the right uniformity on $G.$ We apply the original description by Samuel from 1948 to give a simple computation of the universal minimal flow for groups of automorphisms of uncountable structures using Fraïssé theory and Ramsey theory. This work generalizes some of the known results about countable structures.

Following a similar result of Uspenskij on the unitary group of a separable Hilbert space, we show that, with respect to the lower (or Roelcke) uniform structure, the Polish group $G= \operatorname{Aut}(\mu)$ of automorphisms of an atomless standard Borel probability space $(X,\mu)$ is precompact. We identify the corresponding compactification as the space of Markov operators on $L_2(\mu)$ and deduce that the algebra of right and left uniformly continuous functions, the algebra of weakly almost periodic functions, and the algebra of Hilbert functions on $G$, i.e., functions on $G$ arising from unitary representations, all coincide. Again following Uspenskij, we also conclude that $G$ is totally minimal.

We will show that any extension of a product of two Cantor minimal $\Z$-systems is affable in the sense of Giordano, Putnam and Skau.