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Improve feedback for errors in data folder structures #46

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wettenhj opened this issue May 1, 2015 · 0 comments
Open

Improve feedback for errors in data folder structures #46

wettenhj opened this issue May 1, 2015 · 0 comments
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@wettenhj
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wettenhj commented May 1, 2015

I encountered this error in MyData:

'A folder name of "Acta1" was found where a "MyTardis" folder was expected.' 

on an instrument PC while using MyData's "MyTardis"\experiment\dataset folder structure.

The problem was that a user ("xyz") had created dataset folders in:
D:\users\xyz\Acta1
instead of:
D:\users\xyz\MyTardis\Acta1\

MyData's error message should have told me which user folder ("D:\users\xyz") the problem occurred in.

Historically, (given previous data upload mechanisms we have used with this instrument PC), it would have been quite legitimate for users to create a non-MyTardis folder at the same level as the "MyTardis" folder, which would be used for saving data which the user didn't want to upload to MyTardis. However, MyData's philosophy is that everything within the directory tree provided to MyData ("D:\users") should be uploaded to MyTardis and made available to the facility managers (whether it can be assigned to an individual user or not). If users don't want their data uploaded to MyTardis, they can save it outside of "D:\users" (which could be renamed to "D:\MyTardisUsers" to make it clear), or if it is particularly sensitive private data which they don't want managed by MyTardis, then they can delete it off the instrument PC as soon as they have saved the data to their own secure storage location.

So if the "MyTardis" folder is not used for opting-in / opting-out of MyTardis uploads, then one might question why this folder structure is supported by MyData. It is primarily for backwards compatibility with instrument PCs we've worked with in the past, using a different upload method. But the "\MyTardis\experiment\dataset" folder structure can also be useful when the facility manager configuring MyData wants their users to be able to explicitly group their datasets into MyTardis experiments, (with experiment names specified by the user as folder names), instead of leaving it up to MyData to generate MyTardis experiment names (e.g. "Test User - Microscope1") automatically. Because datasets can contain subdirectories, if we didn't include the "MyTardis" folder, it would be easy to confuse a "D:\users\username\dataset\subdirectory" folder structure with a "D:\users\username\experiment\dataset" folder structure.

@wettenhj wettenhj self-assigned this May 27, 2015
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