Mirage is in production

Mirage has been in limited production on the following CMM's instruments for a few months:

• The JEOL Neoscope in the Hawken Lab
• The JEOL 6610 in the Hawken Lab
• The JEOL 6440 in the Hawken Lab
• The JEOL 7100 in the AIBN Lab

If you are CMM user of one of these instruments, this means that you have a new way to access and organize the data from your sessions on these instruments.

How to access your data

Simply do the following:

1. Open a web browser and visit "http://mirage.cmm.uq.edu.au"
2. Click the "Login" button or link.
3. Enter your ACLS account name and password, and click "Login"
4. Now you can either click the "Data" link to go your data, or click the "Getting Started" link for an overview of how to use Mirage.

How your data got there

Data files written to the "S:" drive on the instrument is "grabbed" and assembled into Datasets based on their file names and when they were written.  If the grabber can work out who the Datasets belong to, they are sent to Mirage automatically.

If the data grabber can't work out who Datasets belong to, they are kept in the instrument's "hold" queue for a couple of weeks, or until someone claims them.  This will typically happen if you forget to login to the instrument using your own ACLS account.  Always remember to log in and log out.

Why is your data missing from Mirage?

• If your data was saved before the instrument was Mirage enabled, then we don't have it.
• It might be stuck in the "hold" queue ... because you forgot to log in.
• It might have been sent to someone else's account ... if you forgot to login and they forgot to log out!
• If you are in the habit of renaming files on the "S:" drive, you may have confused the grabber.  The data is probably there under the old name. (Wait until you can access the files in Mirage before you start renaming and reorganizing things.)

And if none of that helps, your data should still be accessible in the old way via the "R:" drive on one of the Lab PCs.  (But of course, you only have a week to retrieve it from there.)

About this blog

Hi Folks,

This blog is about the Data Management Systems that we are building and running at the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (CMM) at the University of Queensland (UQ).

CMM is the UQ's main microscopy centre, running a number of Electron Microscopes, X-ray Diffraction instruments and Mass Spectrometers in 5 separate laboratories on the St Lucia campus. There are in the region of 20 major instruments, and we provide a service to over 400 regular clients (UQ staff and students, staff and students of other universities, and commercial clients).  UQ CMM is a foundation node of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF).

All of CMM's instruments produce results in digital form; 2D and 3D images, and various other kinds of characterization data, often in proprietary formats.   The problems we (the data wranglers) are trying to solve are:

• Getting the data off the instruments and into a place where the clients can access it.
• Providing long term storage for the data.
• Allowing clients to view, organize, search and process their data collections.
• Allowing clients to share data with other clients, and "publish" it in various ways for other people to fund and use.
• Do all of the above in a secure and sustainable way.

In this blog, I'm going to talk about where we are, where we are going, and how we implement things.  I'm going to try to cover things in ways that are relevant to both the users of the CMM facilities, and to other people who are building their own data management systems.

Stay tuned ...