Associating data elements with metadata

Each row in a metadata table can be associated with one or more data elements, such as sequence lists, expression tracks, variant tracks, etc. Each data element can be associated with one row of a given metadata table. Once data elements are associated with rows of a metadata table, it is then possible to use that metadata table to find data elements that share particular attributes, launch analyses like expression analyses where sample attributes are key, define batch units such that an analysis runs once per sample, or to group samples together according to their attributes when running certain types of workflows.

Each association has a "Role" label assigned to the associated element, which can be used to indicate the nature of the data element. For example, a newly imported sequence list could be given a role like "Sample data", or "NGS reads".

Associating data with metadata rows can happen in several ways, depending on the circumstances:

The rest of this section describes this last point, where you associate data elements to metadata.

To do this, open a metadata table, and then click on the Associate Data button at the bottom of the Metadata Table view. Two options are available:



Subsections