Important Note: LifeBlock tool is currently under development and you are using version 1.0 of the tool. The following sections explain how the tool works.

Access

Access to the tool is currently by login and password that will have been provided to you by one of the LifeWatch ERIC team members. If you have any problems with access, please do not hesitate to contact the developers team at lifeblock@lifewatch.eu.

Structure of the tool

Currently the tool has the following sections, the functioning of which can be found in the following sections of this document:
  • - LifeBlock Data Tool
  • - LifeBlock Explorer
  • - Developer tools
  • - Help


LifeBlock Data Tool

This section is the one you should use as a priority for the management of your data. This section has two sections and sub-sections:
  • - My data
  • - Search
    • Federated search - For relational searches.
    • Semantic keyword search - Standard semantic search or faucet.
    • Semantic structured search - Semantic search on structured data.
The objective of this section is to constitute a single point where you can store and manage the data that you can retrieve from any of the research infrastructures that the platform currently contains, such as GBIF, Zenodo, LTer, LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue and DiSSCo (in the near future). You can also generate your own data from scratch by entering them in the data entry form as we will indicate in the following sections.

My Data

The My Data section has a complete collection of all the data you have stored or generated. Each data is a combination of the metadata that defines it and the associated datasets where these exist. The data is presented in cardinal order, although you can currently filter by date. All data imported by each user is stored in this section. The us
er can modify any parameter of a data, which will result in a new data that will be linked to the previous one, thus preserving traceability in the environment.

Search

Search is the most extensive function of this first version. This search has two modalities: federated and semantic.
The federated search performs relational searches on parameters set in the five infrastructures GBIF, Zenodo, LTer, LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue and DiSSCo (in the near future). These searches are performed directly on the infrastructures and the results reported by the infrastructures are returned. These results can be stored in whole or in part in the account of the user who performed the search.
These types of search are discussed below:

Federated search
The federated search allows a standard relational search in any of the 5 IRs that are currently incorporated or in all of them at the same time. Depending on the selected IR, more or less search fields can be chosen depending on the availability of its API.

Figure 1. Federated search with LifeBlock

The search results are provided according to the return obtained by the IRs. Any or all of these results can be imported as new data into the user's account. Once it has been imported, it will form part of the semantic searches of this user and all those who use semantic search in any of its modalities in the future.

Semantic keyword search
The semantic search is always performed on data that has been imported by users. In other words, the semantic search does not search the IRs as their APIs are not prepared for this type of search, but uses the LifeWatch ERIC semantic API to search on datasets that have been previously imported.

Figure 2. Semantic keyword search with LifeBlock

Once a search has been performed based on any of the types provided, the search can be filtered using any of the filter fields provided in the results, which structure the results (faceting) so that they can be easily filtered for refinement of the results. Filters are automatically incorporated from the metadata and are of many types such as title, language, Date, value, rank, taxon value, location, Project name, etc. Filtering by any of these fields will return a subset of the result that will help refine the search considerably.

As with federated search, the results can be saved to the user's desktop for later use or can be edited and modified, automatically preserving the traceability of the actions performed.

Semantic structured search

This type of search works differently from the previous one. In semantic structured search, the user starts from six entities (dataset, taxon, person, organisation, location and specimen) from which to construct related phrases that can develop powerful filtered searches involving one or more filters that the user can establish following the primitives provided in a simple and easy way.

Figure 3. Semantic structured search with LifeBlock

Developer Tools

This tool is under development, but will allow in the future the full use of the API and the development of smart contracts on LifeBlock among other things.

Last modified: Wednesday, 30 August 2023, 4:28 PM
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