DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data DATUM in Action Supporting researchers to plan and manage their research data Dr Jeremy Ellman Prof Julie McLeod School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences JISCMRD Workshop: Meeting challenges in RDM PLanning,23 Mar 2012
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 1 Outline DATUM in Action & its research project target: MATSIQEL MATSIQEL data requirements Infrastructure element: a software solution Conclusions
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 2 DATUM in Action Helping researchers on an EU FP7 staff exchange project define & implement good RDM practice 1. Training & mentoring DMP (based on DCC & tailored) Action Research Approach 1. Requirements analysis 2. Data management plan 3. Supporting infrastructure InfrastructureSteps 2. Guidance researcher focused; what they wanted; ’how to’ & links to existing NU guidance; usable by other HEIs roles & responsibilities folders, files & version control metadata information security 3. Technology i.shared drive, MS Office ii.SharePoint (collaborative prototype) iii.Bazaar – version control
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 3 MATSIQEL: EU FP7 Research Project Data management requirements complex as research data is Confidential Partially anonymised Partly proprietary Multiple versions both raw data and derived data Multiple levels of access required/allowed Required Internationally EU and non EU
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 4 Data Requirements Version control Multiple copies of raw data Versions of processing software Multiple versions of processed data Different research centres Distribution control Central shared data space Authoritative record Permissions management
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 5 Technology infrastructure BZR: Bazaar Distributed Version Control System Multiple repositories Multiple branches Local check-in check-out Multiple platform Windows, Mac, Linux Huge range of tools bazaar-explorer cross platform GUI
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 6 VCS Vs DVCS Source: Auvray 2008 “Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide”
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 7 Bazaar Demo The video describes how the open source version control software Bazaar could be used by researchers to manage research data from any discipline.
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 8 Core Commands "bzr init" initializes Bazaar management for the current directory. "bzr add" makes all unknown files in the current directory known to Bazaar. "bzr status" generates a report of the current state of the local branch. "bzr commit -m "[commit-message]"" creates a commit "bzr mv [versioned-file] [new-location]" moves the [versioned-file] "bzr remove [file]" removes the specified file or files "bzr log" generates a log of every commit in sequence "bzr help [command]" the Bazaar help command provides embedded "bzr merge [location]" instructs Bazaar to merge changes "bzr pull" performs a fast-forward update of the local working "bzr update" merges the contents of the remote branch into the local branch "bzr push" performs the equivalent of a "bzr update" on the remote mirror "bzr uncommit" "rewinds" the branch to the last commit "bzr revert [file]" takes the specified file and reverts the contents of that
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 9 Conclusions Research data needs to be controlled Version control, protection and distribution are common requirements Distributed version control software is freely available BZR Repositories can be archived in SharePoint
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data Project funded by JISC Copyright holder: Northumbria University, School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences, 2011 Materials made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license DATUM in Action