Image Access

[icaoberg]

I want my image collection to be available to every user in the database. How can I do this?

[jmoore]

Hi Ivan,

the short answer, though unwanted answer is its not particularly supported at the moment. There are several ways which you can come close to what you want, all with their own downsides:

• Add a special group with all users as a member. If you choose those route, there should also be a way to make sure new users are automatically added to the group, if that would be helpful. The major downside is that data must sit in this group, and users must know to login to the group.
• Use the "common space". Data in the "user" group is visible to everyone, without logging in to a special group. The moveToCommonSpace method is used for this. But, it requires that the entire graph be moved to the user group. If you forget any objects, then loading will be odd.
• Use shares. In 4.2, shares are an OMERO.web-only feature, so you would not be able to share your images in Insight.

There are probably some others, but these are the main suggestions we can make. Perhaps you could explain a bit more about what all you would like to accomplish?

Cheers,
~Josh

[icaoberg]

Mainly I have two situations
1) On our side. We want to develop an application for omero.web that given one or several of my images, it would do relevance search on EVERY image in the database. including images that do not belong to me. my point is, is it "better" to have a global user with all permissions and grant all other people read access to the data? think of a curated image database where ever user can read but not write.

2) I am trying to connect to another omero database. I was able to see their repository, I know it is full of images. But when I login in omero.webclient I see nothing. I belong to the system and default groups. Unfortunately I can't see the data. The solution would be to create a special group, say "developers". If I belong to developers and the person whose data I want to see is a member of developers should i be able to see the data?

Thanks
Ivan

[wmoore]

If you and the owner of the images are in the same group, and the permissions on that group are 'read-only' or 'collaborative' then you will be able to access their images.

The API will allow you to get their images from a query (by ID or list images or return their images from a search) and the web client will allow you to browse their images by choosing the right group (top right - see screen-shot) and then in the Data browser, choosing the correct user from the list on the left (see screen-shot)

Will

[jmoore]

Mainly I have two situations
1) On our side. We want to develop an application for omero.web that given one or several of my images, it would do relevance search on EVERY image in the database. including images that do not belong to me. my point is, is it "better" to have a global user with all permissions and grant all other people read access to the data? think of a curated image database where ever user can read but not write.

I'm not sure how this applies. Do you mean that all the images would belong to the one global user? If that fulfills all your requirements, it would certainly be one way to manage things.

2) I am trying to connect to another omero database. I was able to see their repository, I know it is full of images. But when I login in omero.webclient I see nothing. I belong to the system and default groups. Unfortunately I can't see the data. The solution would be to create a special group, say "developers". If I belong to developers and the person whose data I want to see is a member of developers should i be able to see the data?

For this, see Will's post. You have to actively move into the group to see the data there.

Cheers,
~Josh.

[icaoberg]

how can i make an existing group collaborative? i am trying to do it from omero.webadmin

[wmoore]

In webadmin, click on the "Groups" link to see the table of groups. Edit the group by clicking the icon on the far left of the row. At the bottom of the page is the Permissions options. You want to make it 'Collaborative' - but you also have the choice of "read-only" which means that users will not be able to annotate other users' data.

To read more about the different permissions levels, see http://www.openmicroscopy.org.uk/site/s ... rmissions/

Will.