<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear All-<div><br></div><div>As we move towards release of OMERO-Beta4, we have a number of issues coming up we'd like feedback on.<br><br>The first is metadata editability. In Beta4, we've gone for something we call "metadata completion". This means that, for a given image file format, we capture and find a home for all of the metadata in that format which fits into OMERO. For some formats, that's easy, because there is so little metadata. But many are quite rich, and this project has been a huge effort by the Bio-Formats (Melissa Linkert) and OMERO (Brian Loranger, Chris Allan, Jean-Marie Burel) teams.<br><br>The result is that we will support 5 rich file formats in Beta4 "completely". Note that we have to make decision about what each piece of metadata means-- we certify that it has been imported into OMERO, although there are a few edge cases where we've had to make decisions about where each piece of metadata goes.<br><br>This raises a critical question, that we have debated within OME for years (some of you might recall emails on this a few years ago), namely:<br><br>What image metadata should be editable? Imagine that some value was either unset or wrongly set on the microscope, a user may want to correct the situation after import. Then, if we allow editing, how much info about that editing should we track?<br><br>Some technical points:<br><br>-- in OMERO, we store every write to the DB as an Event. So we know every change, who did it and when.<br><br>-- we really do NOT want to store every metadata change made. Doing this properly means making multiple copies of every database entry every time one thing changes-- so things get bloated very rapidly.<br><br>A compromise we are considering seriously-- keep only the last metadata value, but log all the changes. If a user has changed any metadata that came with an image fille, we can add functionality to the client applications to let the user find this out. You'll know that the data has changed, by whom, and when, you just wont know what the previous data was.<br><br>If necessary, we could implement an audit database, which stores previous metadata versions, or maybe just the first version-- the one that was acquired with the original . This would be optional-- if needed it could be turned on. We won't get that done for the first Beta4.0 release, but if it's a priority, it could come later this year.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks for your ideas and comments.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div><div><div apple-content-edited="true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">**************************</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation & Expression</font></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">College of Life Sciences</font></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">MSI/WTB/JBC Complex</font></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">University of Dundee</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Dow Street</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Dundee DD1 5EH</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">United Kingdom</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br style="font-family: Helvetica; "></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">phone (01382) 385819</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Intl phone: 44 1382 385819 </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">FAX (01382) 388072 </span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">email: <a href="mailto:jason@lifesci.dundee.ac.uk">jason@lifesci.dundee.ac.uk</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br style="font-family: Helvetica; "></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Lab Page: <a href="http://www.dundee.ac.uk/lifesciences/swedlow/">http://www.dundee.ac.uk/lifesciences/swedlow/</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">Open Microscopy Environment: <a href="http://openmicroscopy.org">http://openmicroscopy.org</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">**************************</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><div>The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096.</div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>