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lter / deims

The Drupal Ecological Information Management System install profile. Repo used for development.
http://drupal.org/project/deims
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Documenting non-tabular Data Sources #57

Closed isangil closed 8 years ago

isangil commented 10 years ago

How do we use DEIMS to document non-tabular sources, such as photos, multi-dimensional matrices, videos, geo-features, genomics data, modeling inputs/outputs, etc?

Here are two (of many) approaches to answer this issue.

  1. A simple description of a data source can be accomplished with the current DEIMS data-source content type, just ignoring the 'variables' tab, and some of the descriptors that are oriented to CSVs or Tab-delimited structures/spreadsheets. Introducing some tweaks in the data-source form and documentation can guide the user in this simplified generic approach to documenting diverse data sources.
  2. Data-source specific descriptors should be also designed and implemented.
    For example, forms that capture genomics data sources, coupled with clients that work with external APIs such as Mg-Rast to simplify the data-documenting workflows. Other notable example: GIS-data: we should re-use existing popular solutions rather than reinventing new forms. Cartaro distributions elements, perhaps?

We should also tie graphical data sources in the DEIMS-metadata workflow - the elements exists (image, media), we need some extra effort to link those in the 'data set' workflow.

We will have to expand the XML-services we offer with data-sources to capture these additions.

If you can contribute, commenting, designing or implementing, please do so.

isangil commented 9 years ago

One way to deal with these sources is still using the same "Data Source" form. If documented properly, people can just upload the file, and ignore the rest of the form. The EML should detect the minimal metadata, and just output the XML chuck as .

The question is, should we apply the logic on the filemime or on the lack of variables or both?

isangil commented 9 years ago

For now, let's introduce the EML modification to safeguard other filetypes, do dome documentation on the book of DEIMS.

isangil commented 8 years ago

Actually, it is all about choices. One thing we have done is defining an alternate view mode for those data-sources. Specially those w/o attributes/variables. Using Display Suite, on a per-node basis, you can get a different presentation look and feel that makes more sense. Also, you can hide the Date explorer, as it is not relevant. THis compounded with the EML module enhancements is a good solution.