Imports of openBIS exports

It is possible to export metadata and data from one openBIS instance and import them to another openBIS instance. The export process is described here.

Metadata import

The exported metadata (and related masterdata) can be imported in another openBIS instance by an instance admin via the admin UI, as described in mastedata import and export.

Exported metadata (and masterdata) are contained in a xlsx folder, as shown below.

Metadata and masterdata are contained in the metadata.xlsx file. In addition to the metadata.xlsx file, the xlsx folder might contain additional folders:

• a scripts folder: contains scripts associated with types in the metadata.xlsx file, if these are present;

• a data folder: holds the content of large text fields that exceed the size of an Excel cell (32767 characters) and would not fit in the masterdata.xlsx file;

• a miscellaneous folder: contain images embedded in text of exported entries, if present.

If a data, scripts and/or miscellaneous folders are present in the exported xlsx folder, the xlsx folder needs to be zipped and the xlsx.zip file can be imported via admin UI. If only the metadata.xlsx file is contained in the xlsx folder, the metadata.xlsx file can be directly uploaded via admin UI.

Datasets import

Exported datasets are contained in a data folder in a format ready to be imported via eln-lims default dropbox.

The folders contained in the data folder need to be placed in the eln-lims incoming directory and from here will be uploaded to the corresponsing openBIS entities. The metadata of the datasets is read from the metadata.json file contained inside each dataset folder.

When importing both metadata and data in a different openBIS instance, first the metadata need to be imported and afterwards the data.