[ome-devel] OME-XML BinData

[Andrew Patterson]

Hello People,

As a review of the OME Data Model we are wondering if there is anyone storing their binary image data directly in XML?

From its initial release in 2003, it has always been possible to store your binary image data as one or more base64-encoded blocks. As imaging has developed, the data people have been collecting has got bigger and bigger, now it is at the stage that this storage method is looking less practical.

The element BinData (http://www.openmicroscopy.org/Schemas/BinaryFile/2011-06) is still one of the 3 options within Pixels (http://www.openmicroscopy.org/Schemas/OME/2011-06) along with TiffData and MetadataOnly.

We are considering marking the use of BinData within Pixels as deprecated. This will not stop people using it in the current or next version, but it is a signal that we will look at removing support of it in a future version.

If this is being actively used then of course we will maintain it, but if no one is using it for real data it would be better to put our efforts into new functionality.

Does anyone have a use case for this?

Thanks,

Andrew

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Andrew Patterson
ajpatterson at lifesci.dundee.ac.uk
Software Developer, Open Microscopy Environment
Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, University of Dundee