Physion Consulting Blog

Ovation App update

jackie — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:07:07 +0000

The Ovation Application, new with Ovation 1.4, has been updated. You can upgrade to the newest version of the app by choosing Check for Updates from the Help menu. For more control over which modules to upgrade, go to Tools > Plugins.

This upgrade focused on an editable properties view for selected elements, since the previous property display was not editable.

Properties are powerful resource for organizing data, and can be especially useful for querying. They are stored in the database per user, so that properties with the same key can exist across users. Since property values are typed, we infer the types of newly created property values appropriately for the following types:

Strings
Single numeric values (Integers, Doubles, Longs)
Boolean values (True or False)
Dates/Times

We will add support for numeric data, byte array, and object reference properties as needed, in future updates.

Ovation’s new interface

Barry — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:38:18 +0000

With the release of Ovation 1.4, I’m very excited to introduce the Ovation application, a revolutionary new tool that will help Ovation users browse, search, annotate and visualize their data. We’ll have a series of blog posts in the coming weeks highlighting features of the system. But for now, we just want you to try it. In fact, we built the database upgrade tool for Ovation 1.4 into the Ovation application. Current users, upgrade your Ovation database to version 1.4 by connecting to the database in the Ovation application: click “Change Connection” from the “File” menu (if the database connection dialog is not visible), then enter the connection string, user name and password for your database.

The Ovation data browser is open-source software. Data visualization is highly pluggable and users will be able to write plugins to visualize new data types, analyses or summaries of their data. The code is on GitHub, and we encourage you to take a look, fork the code and see what amazing tools you can build! Documentation on plugin architecture and APIs will be posted on the GitHub page as well.

Current users can download Ovation 1.4 and the Ovation data browser. If you’d like to try Ovation, email us.

Ovation 1.3

Barry — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:58:26 +0000

This release of the Ovation Scientific Data Management System® enhances the performance of the Ovation query engine, particularly in high-latency or low bandwidth network environments. Current users can download the update at https://download.physionconsulting.com.

Ovation™ is a data management system built specifically for scientists. Our state-of-the-art program handles the entire lifecycle of scientific data from acquisition to publication and beyond.

Want to hear more? Send us an email.

Ovation 1.2

jackie — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:42:53 +0000

Just in time for summer, Ovation 1.2 is now available for download. This release adds built-in image and image annotation support. Along with our ImageJ plugin (currently in private beta), you can now view and collaboratively annotate images in Ovation. Like all other annotations, image annotation are stored per-user, so multiple users can annotate the same images without stepping on anyone’s toes (of course, you can view others’ annotations too). In other words, we’re pretty excited about image annotations in Ovation.

There’s much more in this release. Read release notes at bit.ly/JJ28Rm.

If you’d like to try the ImageJ plugin, please contact support@physionconsulting.com.

Science Code Manifesto

Barry — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:29:02 +0000

Making sure the code used to perform an analysis is available has become an imperative in data (and software) intensive science. We believe that the entire provenance of an analysis should be available and are proud to endorse the Science Code Manifesto as an important step towards this goal.

Ovation 1.1.2

Barry — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:06:04 +0000

Ovation 1.1.2 is now available for download. Read the release notes at http://bit.ly/AvZACm. This release brings support for URL-referenced Response and Resource data, AnalysisRecord hiearchies and many performance improvements and bug fixes.

We’re especially proud of the AnalysisRecord hierarchy representation. It’s now possible to represent complex analysis pipelines in Ovation’s database. Even analyses that feed multiple down-stream analyses can be easily represented, tracked and shared.

This upgrade is recommended for all users. Current customers can download the latest versions from download.physionconsulting.com. If you are interested in hearing more about Ovation or receiving a demo license, please let us know (info@physionconsulting.com).

Ovation 1.1

Barry — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:05:53 +0000

Ovation 1.1 is now available. This release brings great annotation and collaboration features. This release also has several significant performance improvements, especially for users on slow networks.

We’re very proud of the new annotation features, which enhance the ability of many users to annotate the same dataset. Long after data is collected and analyzed these rich interpretations added by many users over the lifetime of the data will bring new value to old data sets. Instead of trying to guess what the original researcher thought of the data, imagine being able to read their annotations directly out of the database. Of course, you’ll be able to add your own as well. And you can now search for data based on these annotations and interpretations. So, for example, this release allows behavioral researchers to find trials in the database where more than one user annotated a behavior on video but the annotated regions do not (or do) overlap in space.

Performance enhancements in this release greatly reduce the amount of data that Ovation transmits over the network between server and client. On slower networks such as VPNs, this release brings fifty-fold speed gains in our testing.

Check out the release notes, or download the installer.

Ovation: data management for the biological sciences

Barry — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:39:02 +0000

I’d like to invite you to take a look at our new whitepaper describing the features of Ovation for the biological sciences.

Ovation 1.0.4

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:02:49 +0000

Ovation 1.0.4 is now available. This release brings new collaboration features, performance enhancements and full feature parity for Windows platforms (XP, Vista and Windows 7). Because of a schema change in this release, users should upgrade all clients simultaneously; after the upgrade, older clients will not be able to edit or query collaborative annotations such as keywords and properties.

Existing Ovation users can download the 1.0.4 installers from download.physionconsulting.com. If you are interested in trying Ovation, please call us (617-299-9520) or send an email to info@physionconsulting.com. We’d be happy to set you up with a trial version of Ovation.

Ovation 1.0.3

Barry — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:31:25 +0000

Ovation 1.0.3 is now available. This release brings explicit sample rate support for Response objects as well as several minor bug fixes and API improvements. Because of a schema change in this release, users should upgrade all clients simultaneously; after the upgrade, older clients will not be able to connect to an upgraded database.

Existing Ovation users can download the 1.0.3 installers from download.physionconsulting.com. If you are interested in trying Ovation, please call us (617-299-9520) or send an email to info@physionconsulting.com. We’d be happy to set you up with a trial version of Ovation.

Several new and exciting features are coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!