We are pleased to announce release 1.7.0 of the CEDAR Workbench, available as of late yesterday! This release especially focused on changes to upload AIRR metadata to the NCBI repositories (SRA, BioSample, and BioProject), but includes a few new features and the usual improvements to usability and reliability.
Adding additional metadata: the Attribute-Value pair
Many have requested the ability for metadata editors—the people filling out forms—to add new attributes and values to a form. Maybe because many of the NCBI databases allow this feature in their submissions.
We're happy to deliver this feature in this release. We have tried to make sensible JSON and RDF result for whatever attribute and value are entered, though we obviously have to assume the value field is a data field, not an object.
Repository Model On-the-Fly Validation
You may have noticed a few new icons in the upper right. These first arrived in Release 1.5, and are now a bit more refined, so it's worth briefly reviewing what these mean.
Means everything is cool with your template or metadata.
Your template or metadata needs saving!
The template or metadata you are working on can't be saved; it is read-only for you.
And if that last button isn't a white checkmark, CEDAR isn't treating its artifacts right! Check in with a CEDAR person to find out what's up.
Usability and Reliability Improvements
We made a number of front end usability improvements—and yes, fixed some bugs too—in this release.
CEDAR Videos
We produced the first of a set of CEDAR instructional videos. All of our CEDAR videos can be seen in our YouTube channel.
Docker Updates
We simplified the Docker installation process and performed various tasks to harden the Docker deployment. Please contact us if you want more information about our Dockerized version release plans.
Domain Name Change
We changed the domain name of the main CEDAR server from metadatacenter.net to metadatacenter.org. You, and identifiers for any artifacts you've already created, will be redirected silently from the metadatacenter.net web address to the metadatacenter.org address. We are also forwarding our API documentation links to the new domain. Please let us know if you have any problem with any of that!
References
All tasks completed for the 1.7.0 release can be found at our GitHub issues list.
You can also review the GitHub release history for 1.7 page.