Ampletracks is a flexible and heirarchical database specifically designed for storing data about material samples. It aims to balance the following:
- Ease of use
- Advanced features such as the ability to record various relationships between records
- Security
- Flexbility
- Cost effectiveness - both in terms of development cost and running cost
Whilst Ampletracks has been designed with materials science in mind, the flexibility inherent in the system means that it is likely to be useful in other contexts. Please let us know if you find a novel use for Ampletracks.
Ampletracks has been designed to meet the following fundamental goals:
- Keep track of material samples and associated artefacts (physical or virtual) in order to reduce the risk of loss and speed up the process of locating them
- Record meta data about samples and associated artefacts systematically in a way that can be shared easily
- Record the relationships between samples and associated artefacts, and track their ancestry
Ampletracks currently has the following features:
- Handle an arbitrary number of record types e.g. samples, document, equipment 21 Define an arbitrary number data fields of varying types (text box, date, drop-down select box, radio buttons etc) for each record Type
- Define and display dependericles between Fields e.g. only show field B if the value in field A is greater than 10
- Create, browse, update, delete any number of records of any record type
- See the version history of any data field in any record
- Generate QRCoded labels which will direct any device to the corresponding record in Appletracks. This includes option for administrators to select a subset of data fields which are accessible to users without a logon to the system e.g. the phone number to ring if the sample is found
- Define a parent-child hierarchy between records (only of the same record type) and the option to mark the values of some data fields as being inherited from the parent record
- Define relationships that link one or more records to another record (even of a different record type) 28 Export record type definitions in XML format, and Import record type definitions created on other Ampletracks instances
The system is built around a number of entities:
-
Record Types
The representation of the different things you are storing data about
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Records
An item of a given record type
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Data Fields
The individual bits of data associated with a given record type
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Relationships
A Link between a record and one or more other records (of the same type, or a different type)
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Users
People who have a login to the system
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Permission
The right to perform a specific action (list, view, create, update, delete), to a specific entity
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Role
A named bundle of permissions that can be assigned to a user
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Project
An organisational unit which can have users and records associated with it
For general installation guide see the INSTALL.md file.
For more specific details about the built-in automated SSL creation and renewal process see SSL_CERT.md file.
See the UPGRADE.md file
Ampletracks was funded through the EPSRC MIDAS grant, on the study of irradiated fuel assembly materials - EP/S01702X/1, https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/S01702X/1
Ampletracks was conceptualised by Philipp Frankel, Benjamin Jefferson, Christopher Race (all contributed equally). Ampletracks is built and maintained by Benjamin Jefferson, with support from Andrew Wilson. The initial testing of Ampletracks was done by Christopher Race and Rhys Thomas. Documentation is currently being written by Benjamin Jefferson. Stavrina Dimosthenous is responsible for testing instance deployment.
See CITATION.cff, or generate an automatic APA or BibTeX entry under About on the right-hand side.
Ampletracks is an Open Source project aimed at improving structured data collection and sharing in the materials science community although we think it might have wider applications beyond materials science. We welcome contributions from projects using and modifying Ampletracks for their own purposes. If you modify Ampletracks in a way that might be generally useful to the wider community please consider submitting this as a pull request so that others can benefit from it Please fork the repository and submit any changes in the form of a pull request.
Amplretracks is developed using a branching strategy to ensure stability and continuous integration. All development is performed on feature or bugfix branches that are then merged into the Main branch. Periodically, we create release branches (e.g., Ampltracks-1-0, Ampltracks-1-1) from Main. These release branches represent stable versions of Amplretracks and are used for deployments. This strategy makes it easier to manage versions, fix bugs, and add features in a controlled and predictable manner.