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Lab Samples Database "JuliaBase" Published As Open Source

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-it-up dept.

First time accepted submitter bronger writes After six years of closed-source development, the Research Centre Jülich published its database solution for laboratory samples and processes as open source, while continuing maintaining it. JuliaBase is a framework written in Python/Django that enables research institution or research group to set up browser-based samples tracking and measurement management easily. Next to Bika and LabLey, this is one of the very few open source LIMS systems, and in contrast to the others, not specialized in biomedicine or service labs.

4 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. LIS, LMS by CurryCamel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

    So much stuff one has never heard about.

    1. Re:LIS, LMS by plopez · · Score: 3, Informative

      No I do not think so. I have used LIMS and database applications to track samples extensively. If you understand database normalization and Object Orientation you will find that most LIMS can follow a pattern very much the same regardless of the domain. You have samples, which then have tests, which mostly look for constituents, results of the tests, test methods (often ANSI or ISO), blanks, dupes, spikes, counts, densities or concentrations, some decay rates (chemical or radiological), and some other rates such as death rates of test subjects.

      That's a huge chuck of chemistry and biology. I have used LIMS for hydrology; which included chemical and boilogical tests; geology; chemical and lithographic; and remediation; which included chemical and biological tests, and materials science which includes chemical and physical properties of materials.

      I have seen and spoken with people in medicine and biology and the overlap is quite large with what I have written above. If it does not work either the standard is garbage or you do not understand how LIMS works.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  2. Re:Everything seems like a hammer to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    I just left Drupal forever. I had spent about 18 months beating on it. The documentation is 90/10: 90% wrong, 10% right. The API is abysmal. Unless you are doing something that everyone else is doing, you get nowhere very fast, and stay nowhere. Drupal is 'in the box'. If your project is 'out of the box' then Drupal is not your box. "Never Hack Core" but then you steal from core and hack that. I switched to another CMS. I won't mention it because you will only bash it. But it works immensely better. Where I had to write modules to get things done in Drupal, I can just write very small amounts of code. I don't have to keep re-writing the wheel over and over. One of my bigger complains about Drupal was that instead of just writing what I needed for content, I needed to add lots and lots of other code. Adding in 3rd party libraries was a non-starter: you do it all in Drupal or you don't do it. I found most Drupal developers only create very simple websites and have nasty pissy attitudes "you need to learn to code drupal k?", yet when given a reasonable question about the stupid behaviour of Drupal, would scramble around looking for answers and then come back and ask "why do you want to do that? No one else wants to do that!" At best they could offer partial or incomplete or non-answers (like dropping the request 'too hard, can't be done'). For the horrid nightmare that is Drupal, quit trying to turn *anything* into Drupal. Use better CMS's (they are out there). They are professional, they work, and this is the one thing that really caught me: they are very much faster and better. Needless to say, my site now has better social media content, better graphics, is more responsive, has a smaller database footprint, is more extensible, and is wildly easier to maintain because I dropped Drupal. And that's one of the bigger reasons why I dropped Drupal. Even minor changes would whitescreen and you had to be extremely careful. There were craploads of bugs when I first installed it, and I would have to patch libraries, modules, everything for months. Things wouldn't work well and there was no explanation, and then suddenly an updated module or a patch and things are working ok, but the whole thing seemed so fragile: one tiny problem and everything collapses. Its like the developers tried to make it a PITA to write/service/maintain. I still use PHP and JavaScript (and C and Bash behind it). And that still all works well. Drupal? Crap software. Don't walk, RUN!

  3. Re:Oh jesus fuck. by lexluther · · Score: 2

    LIMS is an acronym (Laboratory Information Management System) not a buzzword like web 2.0 or turnkey or full-stack ...