Overview

iSamples use cases, requirements, architecture, and data models

Core Principles

The iSamples architecture is built on a set of fundamental principles about how physical samples are represented digitally:

  • Physical samples are represented by a digital record
  • Each digital record is addressable by at least one identifier that is unique to the record
  • A collection of digital records can be represented by a list of the record identifiers
  • A list of all physical sample digital record identifiers (global record list) can be constructed from the collection lists
  • Digital records may be presented in different serializations (media type)
  • Digital records of a serialization may present different views of the same information (profile)

iSamples Contributions

iSamples has defined:

  • A metadata profile applicable to all physical samples — see the Metadata Model
  • A set of controlled vocabularies for interoperable sample description — see Vocabularies
  • A programmatic interface for sample discovery and access
  • A browser-based data analysis approach using geoparquet + DuckDB-WASM — see the Interactive Explorer

Further Reading