Tools | Training

CEDAR provides a combination of tools and training to aid the community in producing optimal metadata. Here are a few quick links to get you started quickly with CEDAR:

The tools described in this section address challenges throughout the entire metadata life cycle of metadata, and together produce a sophisticated metadata ecosystem for the adopting communities.

The training covers two areas: first the tools themselves, how they can and should be used. Second, the training provides a broad collection of general metadata training resources, that can help beginning and intermediate users understand important features of metadata creation, curation, and re-use.

Over time, we will address how to manage more sophisticated aspects of detailed metadata and its provenance.

Last Updated: 
Sep 25 2020 - 11:14am
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CEDAR Support for Software and Products

The CEDAR software provides many web services, and a variety of data products. This page documents our support system for CEDAR software and products.

CEDAR Metadata Tools

When a biomedical scientist needs to upload her data and enter corresponding metadata into a repository, she is faced with a formidable task. Not only does she need to navigate and fill out many forms to enter (and re-enter!) information, and make sure everything is cross-referenced correctly, but the metadata frequently end up stored in an ad hoc manner, in a non-standard format, and using non-standard terminology. As a result, finding or reusing the metadata, or understanding the underlying experiments, becomes extremely hard, if not...

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CEDAR Template Tools

At CEDAR, we focus on simplifying the process of authoring metadata. We are building a computational infrastructure to develop and use metadata templates for describing laboratory studies. Metadata templates specify the fields that scientists must fill in for every type of study, how the different fields of the template relate to one another, allowed value sets for the fields, and so on. 

Our technology will allow community-based organizations to collaborate to create structured metadata templates; investigators to populate the...

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Training for CEDAR

The CEDAR software is intended for users of any level of technical skill, so users should be able to pick it up and make simple templates or create simple metadata records with little effort.

At the same time, the software provides powerful capabilities to create metadata that is highly structured, carefully validated, and richly connected to concepts defined by the target community. We will be offering a variety of training resources, such as our training tutorial, for CEDAR users...

Training on Metadata

Metadata creation is part data science, part creative integration of knowledge, and part manual labor. While CEDAR aims to minimize the manual labor while maximizing the accomplishment of integrative data science, it helps greatly if users are familiar with general objectives and principals of metadata creation.

The good news is that many sites and projects are working to provide advice about metadata creation, so that people new to the field can improve their understanding and skills. Unfortunately, many resources on the web are...

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Outreach

The Outreach section contains CEDAR documents of general community interest, and is updated regularly. Click on any of the section links—for example, Publications— to see full listings.

CEDAR APIs

The CEDAR system is designed from the start to work as a component within a larger metadata ecosystem. To perform this role, the interfaces and data specifications must be easy to use for developers of interacting data and metadata systems.

The CEDAR Application Program Interface (API) is a collection of REST-based services that provides access to all aspects of the CEDAR system. A few of those services are of particular value to CEDAR users; these are documented as User-Facing API...

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Tips, Limitations, and Workarounds

Tips

  • Decide on your audience, and share appropriately: If you want to share your template with the community for comment and wide adoption, begin sharing with the Everybody group at the earliest opportunity—even before you have added much. You are essentially advertising that you are working on this topic, and other people who want to work on it may join you.
CEDAR References

Overview of References

Jump to List of References

CEDAR has an information-rich web footprint, starting with the primary website, which includes considerable CEDAR-related documentation including a list of publication materials.