Metadata in the RDMS
One powerful feature of the RDMS is that it gives you the option to enrich your files and folders with metadata. The term Metadata refers to “data that provides information about other data”. In other words, it is “data about data”. In layman's terms, think of the information attached to a song that tells you who the singer is and which album it is from. In terms of research, this information could contain the instrument that generated the data, as well as the project or experiment that data is generated for.
The RDMS is based on iRODS; short for “integrated Rule-Oriented Data System”. This system treats all files and folders as data with metadata directly attached to them. The minimum level of metadata that is attached to data (file/folder) is the one generated by the system itself, so called system metadata. This metadata contains for example the date when the data first entered the system, the size of the data and its owner.
The second type of metadata is metadata that is added by a user, so called user-defined metadata. As a user, you can freely decide which metadata tags to use and how many of them to attach to the data as long as you have the required permissions.
For example, you might want to record the name of the machine that produced the data, the internal settings of that machine used to record the data, the experiment number for which the data was produced, the tools and software used, or any tag that you find relevant to locate that particular dataset later in time. This freedom to decide on what metadata to record allows for many extra possibilities of data handling. For example, it allows you to search much more accurately for data on the basis of metadata.
Before we jump into the metadata functionality of the RDMS, one important note to give is that there is no limit to how much metadata you can attach to a file. The System is set up in such a way that does not limit entries or number of tags in the metadata templates. Finally, metadata attached to a collection is not directly inherited by the objects contained in the collection. The objects, however, will be displayed in the search results if the collection that contains them has metadata attached that fits the parameters of the search query.
Metadata Management in the RDMS
How you will manage the metadata attached to your data depends on how you connect to the RDMS. The following sections of our Wiki will explain how you can manage metadata:
- Using The command-line interface to manage metadata using
iCommands - Or using the GUI of the web portal to add/remove/change metadata
Furthermore, you will be able to use the search function to find data using the metadata you attached to it. And finally, the portal allows to define metadata templates and new metadata types which allows for the standardization of your and your group's metadata.