Managing heterogeneous datasets

In disciplines that produce a wide variety of data – such as materials engineering – it can be difficult to provide an infrastructure for storing, managing, sharing and exploring datasets, particularly whilst that data is still in use. The Heterogeneous Data Centre (HDC) is an extension to a file server that provides scientists with tools for exploring their datasets, managing relationships between them and adding metadata. Many of the features evolved from close consultation with our users. In this paper, we evaluate the HDC׳s interface features for managing datasets using data provided by users from the materials engineering and human genetics domains. In particular, we show the simplicity of capturing data through a file share and the flexibility and extensibility of a system supporting hierarchical metadata, dataset relationships and plug-ins.