Unique Identifier (UID) as one of sample attribute types

[H Ding]

Hi,

When I define a new sample type, I would like to use an "UID" attribute as the unique constraint for a sample. What's the best practice to achieve this?

For example, once a mouse sample type is defined, if I prepare a sample sheet with 100 mouse samples in it and upload such sheet into the Seek system intentionally twice, there will be actually 200 mouse samples uploaded into the database. Half of them are redundant duplicates, which is incorrect.

To prevent such scenario happening, I would like to have an option in the sample attribute type as "UID", which serves as the unique constraint for a sample, different from other URI and DOI etc. When a user prepare the sample sheet for extraction into the Seek system,  such UID column could be empty for a sample, indicting that the sample is new and should be inserted into the sample table, and the system should return a UID, such as 'MOUSE-20190911-00001',  for future reference to such sample. The UID column could also be filled with a valid UID, such as 'MOUSE-20190911-00001', for a sample from previous submission, indicating that the information in the current sample sheet should be used for update on that sample in the Seek database. Therefore, we can use such feature to do batch update on a number of samples that are already in the database.  I think such "UID" concept should be an essential feature in the Seek system, which complies with FAIR. Otherwise, how could we send such UID to collaborators in same project for unique and persistent search or for future access and publication? I don't think the internal sample id, such as "/samples/78/", could serve this purpose.  Neither a name, such as "mouse-abcdef", defined by a wetlab user does. It must be generated systematically within the Seek system after an object is defined and extracted.

Does it sound reasonable?

Thanks,

Huiming 

[H Ding]

Hi,

I noticed that there is an "UUID" column in the "samples" table in the database. However, such "UUID" can't be customized, or used for update operation, or for search purpose, or visual to user. Any plan for its revision?

Thanks,

Huiming