Modules¶
BioRails is organised into a set of modules built around the core Administration module. The intention is to make each module a plug-in to streamline the management of each code stream with the various clients, each of which may have specific customisations on a module.
Administration¶
The administration module provides a many of configuration options. There is a catalogue of dictionaries registered within and integrated with BioRails. data types and formats can be combined, along with dictionaries to create parameter types against which structured data can be captured. Users can be defined or imported from LDAP (enterprise only) and assigned to Teams with specific roles. System reports can be modified, Project types created and finally, in the system settings, the application can be integrated with mail servers, LADAP as well as themed. All this is done though configuration and requires no coding effort.
Structured Data Capture
BioRails has been designed to capture structured data in a way that is flexible enough to suite research biologists. One way in which this has been achieved is through the separation of organisation and execution functionality. This means that the actual capture of structured data is guided by the organisation rather than overly constrained by it. For example, workflow recipes can be defined as part of the organisation (assay definition) which when executed in an experiment will create the default steps or tasks for that experiment without preventing new tasks being added.
Organisation¶
Assay definition is the main functionality offered in the Organisation module. Biologists select parameter types defined within the administration module in order to build a subset of assay parameters. These are then used to build services against which requests can be made and processes that define data entry sheets in tasks. These processes can be chained together in a Glossary-Recipe which will created an entire workflow for an experiment.
Execution¶
Experiments capture structured data in a collection of tasks. Tasks can be scheduled and assigned to different users within the system and capture data in a data entry sheet defined by the process used to implement them. A task can be modified in two ways: by dimensions where the number of rows can be increased to deal with added observations, new doses, animals etc; and structurally where new assay parameters can be added.
The data captured in Tasks can be supported by content such as files and images or formatted text and the structured data can be reported using the inbuilt reporting and cross tab functionality.
Content¶
All the key entities have an associated folder agains which content can be stored such as files and images or articles. This content is indexed and a search tool is provided. As well as capturing content, the folder system has been implemented as an authoring tool. A folder can be filled with content dragged in from other folders, conclusions and new analysis can be added to this folder and the whole thing snapshot as a PDF document that in the enterprise version of BioRails can be electronically signed.
Inventory¶
BioRails has been designed to integrate with existing data management systems, the most common of these are inventory. The Inventory module has been the first module to have been implemented fully as a plug in. Simple place-holder functionality for Compounds and Batches and plates have been implemented and we plan to release a turnkey chemistry registration system in the near future.
