EMX (entity model extensible) is a flexible spreadsheet format to easily upload any tabular data using Excel or a zipfile of tab-delimited *.tsv files. This works because you can tell MOLGENIS the 'model' of your data via a special sheet named 'attributes'. Optionally, you can also add metadata on entities (i.e., classes, tables), and packages (i.e, models and submodels)

Minimal example

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For example, if you want to upload an Excel with sheet 'patients':

displayName firstName lastName birthdate birthplace
john_doe john doe 1976-03-13 new york
jane_doe jane doe metropolis
papa_doe papa doe new york

Then you must provide a model of your 'patients' via Excel with sheet named 'attributes':

name entity dataType idAttribute nillable description
displayName patients TRUE FALSE name
firstName patients FALSE first name
lastName patients FALSE family name
birthdate patients date FALSE day of birth
birthplace patients FALSE place of birth

'entity' should show the name of your data sheet. Each attribute the column headers in your data. Default dataType is 'string' so you only need to provide non-string values (int, date, decimal, etc). And you must always provide one idAttribute that has 'nillable' = 'FALSE'.

You can first upload the 'model' and then the 'data'. Or you can put the both into one file and upload in one go. What you prefer :-) [todo: provide example files for download]

Advanced example

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Lets assume we want to upload multiple data sheets, with relations between them:

Cities:

cityName lat lng
new_york 40,712784 -74,005941
metropolis 37,151165 -88,731998

Patients:

displayName firstName lastName birthdate birthplace children disease
john_doe john doe 1976-03-13 new_york none
jane_doe jane doe metropolis none
papa_doe papa doe new_york john_doe, jane_doe cardio

Notes: birthplace refers to elements in the cityName values in the cities table. children contains comma separated values referring to another patient via displayName (trailing spaces will be removed). Warning: when using excel, be sure your decimal separator is a ".", instead of ",", otherwise mrefs might be seen as decimals when their id is a number, this causes molgenis to see a dot between your references and the importer to fail when uploading.

Users:

userName active displayName firstName lastName
jdoe TRUE john_doe john doe
jdoe2 jane_doe jane doe
pdoe papa_doe papa doe

Note: users looks similar patients, i.e. they are also persons having 'displayName', 'firstName', and 'lastName'. We will use this in the model below.

To model the data advanced data example, again you need to provide the 'attributes' (i.e., columns, properties). Optionally, you can also describe entities (i.e., classes, tables), and packages (i.e, models and submodels) which gives you some advanced options.

Attributes:

name entity dataType nillable refEntity idAttribute description
cityName cities FALSE TRUE unique city name
lat cities decimal latitude in degrees
lng cities decimal longitude in degrees
displayName patients FALSE TRUE unique name
firstName persons first name
lastName persons family name
children patients mref patients children of a patient
birthdate patients date day of birth
birthplace patients xref cities place of birth
disease patients disese description
userName users FALSE TRUE unique login name
active users bool whether user is active

The example below defines the model for entities 'city', 'patient' and 'user'. Note that 'users' had some attributes shared with 'patients' so we will use 'object orientation' to say that both 'user' and 'patient' are both a special kind of 'persons'. This will be defined using the 'extends' relation defined in the 'entities' sheet below.

Entities:

name package extends abstract description
cities hospital list of cities
persons hospital true person defines general attributes like firstName, lastName
users hospital persons users extends persons, meaning it 'inherits' attribute definition
patients hospital persons patient extends person, adding patientNumber

In most cases the 'attributes' sheet is all you need. However, in some cases you may want to add more details on the 'entity'. Here we wanted to show use of 'abstract' (i.e., interfaces) to create model class 'persons' and 'extends' (i.e., subclass, inheritance) to define that 'user' and 'patient' have the same attributes as 'persons'. When data model become larger, or when many data sheets are loaded then the 'package' construct enables you to group your (meta)data.

Packages:

name description parent
root my main package
hospital sub package holding entities to describe all kinds of persons root

Rules for technical names

For all technical names in the EMX format, the following rules apply:

  • No special characters, except for; '_' and '#', only letters, numbers are allowed.
  • No names starting with digits.
  • The keywords: "login", "logout", "csv", "base", "exist", "meta", are not allowed.

These rules only apply to the technical names, labels are not limited by these rules.

Attributes options

Required columns

entity

Name of the entity this attribute is part of

name

Name of attribute, unique per entity.

Optional columns (can be omitted)

dataType

Defines the data type (default: string)

Data type Description Expected formatting
string The default data type in MOLGENIS, describing a character string of <255 characters. A string of characters with a length of less than 255
text When having a string with a length of more than 255 characters, this data type is recommended. A string with characters with a maximum length of 65535
int Integers. Natural numbers like 1, 2, 3, -1, -2, -3. rangeMin and rangeMax can be defined. Non decimal numbers in range[-2^31 , 2^31 -1]
long Non-decimal number of type long Non decimal numbers in range[-2^63 , 2^63 -1]
decimal Decimal numbers/floats. Decimal numbers with double-precision ('NaN' not allowed)
bool A boolean value: true/false TRUE/FALSE
date A date without a time-zone in the ISO-8601 calendar system yyyy-mm-dd
datetime An instant in time. Time zone information may be used to specify the instant but is not stored. yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss+timezone e.g. 1985-08-12T11:12:13+0500
xref Reference to an attribute of another entity. Using this type requires another entity (refEntity) with information that is linked to the selected entity. Although you should always refer to the id of an attribute defined as xref, in your data explorer the label of the refEntity will be presented instead. When label is not specified, id will be used as label. When searching for a specific xref value in the filter wizard, the value has to be typed partly and then selected out of a list with suggestions. Id of the attribute you wish to link, this id should always be available in the refEntity.
mref Reference to several attributes of another entity. Using this type requires another entity (refEntity) with information that is linked to the selected entity. Although you should always refer to the id of an attribute defined as mref, in your visualisation, the defined label for the refEntity will be presented, when label is not given, id will be used as label. When searching for a specific mref value in the filter wizard, the value has to be typed partly and then selected out of a list with suggestions. A comma separated list of id’s, these id’s should always be available in the refEntity.
categorical Reference to an attribute of another entity. Using this type requires another entity (refEntity) with information that is linked to the selected entity. Although you should always refer to the id of an attribute defined as categorical, in your visualisation, the defined label for the refEntity will be presented, when label is not given, id will be used as label. This type is typically used when answers are fixed like: “Yes”, “No”, “Unknown”. When searching for a specific categorical value in the filter wizard of molgenis a checkbox can be marked. Id of the attribute you wish to link, this id should always be available in the refEntity.
categorical_mref Reference to several attributes of another entity. Using this type requires another entity (refEntity) with information that is linked to the selected entity. Although you should always refer to the id of an attribute defined as categorical_mref, in your visualisation, the defined label for the refEntity will be presented, when label is not given, id will be used as label. When searching for a specific categorical value in the filter wizard of molgenis a checkbox can be marked. A comma separated list of id’, these id’s should always be available in the refEntity.
compound This type can be used to group parts of your data together. Your dataset will consist of several compounds all containing certain attributes. Don’t forget to specify the partOfAttribute column for the attributes you wish to put in the compound. Nothing
file A file. Create a column of the 'file' data type requires refEntity FileMeta. How to
email An e-mail adress E-mail adress
enum An item chosen from a fixed list of options that can be selected for this data type. The options should be given in an extra column called “enumOptions”. These options cannot be updated without changing meta-data (so deleting the data and meta data and a new upload are required in MOLGENIS 1.x). A value chosen from the enumOptions list specified as a comma separated list of options in the model.
hyperlink A link to a website A link to a website
one_to_many This data type is only supported in MOLGENIS 2.0. A data type that defines the one to many relationship between two columns in two separate tables. Having this data types requires having another table with an xref column which is linked to the one_to_many. The one_to_many requires a refEntity like the other referring data types, but unlike the others, it also requires a “mappedBy” column. In this column the name of the xref in the other column should be specified. For instance, an author can write several books. Books are stored in one table (called “books”) with “author” as xref and as refEntity “authors”. In the authors table authors are stored with books as one_to_many. The books attribute has the refEntity “books” and is mappedBy “author”. A comma separated list of id’s. Requires having an xref to this attribute in another table. Since one_to_many attributes are mapped by a xref attribute they cannot be specified in data sheets.

refEntity

Used in combination with xref, mref, categorical, categorical_mref or one_to_many. Should refer to an entity.

nillable

Whether the column may be left empty. Default: false

idAttribute

Whether this field is the unique key for the entity. Default: false. Use 'AUTO' for auto generated (string) identifiers.

description

Free text documentation describing the attribute

description-{languageCode}

Description for specified language (can be multiple languages, example: description-nl)

rangeMin

Used to set range in case of int or long attributes

rangeMax

Used to set range in case of int or long attributes

lookupAttribute

true/false, default false

Indicates if this attribute should appear in the xref/mref search dropdown in the dataexplorer.

An entity inherits the lookupAttributes from the entity it extends.

If an entity has no lookupAttributes, the labelAttribute is used in the dropdown.

label

optional human readable name of the attribute

label-{languageCode}

label for specified language (can be multiple languages, example: label-nl)

aggregateable

true/false to indicate if the user can use this atrribute in an aggregate query

labelAttribute

true/false to indicate that the value of this attribute should be used as label for the entity (in the dataexplorer when used in xref/mref). Default: false

readOnly

true/false to indicate a readOnly attribute

tags

ability to tag the data referring to the tags sections, described below

validationExpression

javascript validation expression that must return a bool. Must return true if valid and false if invalid. See the Expressions section for a syntax description.

defaultValue

value that will be filled in in the forms when a new entity instance is created. Not yet supported for mref and xref values. For categorical_mref, should be a comma separated list of ids. For xref should be the of the refEntity. For bool should be true or false. For datetime should be a string in the format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZZ. For date should be a string in the format YYYY-MM-DD.

partOfAttribute

is used to group attributes into a compound attribute. Put here the name of the compound attribute.

expression

is used to create computed attributes.

Computed string example: "xref as label attribute" (config attributes table)

  1. Create a new target attribute into the "myEntity" entity, that will become the new computed attribute (in the example: "myLabel")
  2. Add in the expression column of the new attribute "myLabel": "the name of attribute to convert from" (in example: expression -> "myXref")
name entity label dataType idAttribute refEntity nillable visible labelAttribute expression
id myEntity Id int TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE
myXref myEntity Other Entity xref FALSE otherEntity TRUE TRUE FALSE
myLabel myEntity Label string FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE myXref

Computed object example: "computed myXref" (config attributes table)

  1. Create a two new target attributes (attr1, attr2) in a new entity (newEntity).
  2. Create a xref attribute (myXref) to contain the computed entity.
  3. Add in the expression column of new xref attribute (myXref) the next script: "{attr1: myAttr1, attr2: myAttr2}"
  4. The name of the attributes to convert from should be in the same entity as the new xref attribute (myEntity).
name entity label dataType idAttribute refEntity nillable visible labelAttribute expression
id myEntity Id int TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE
myXref myEntity New Entity xref FALSE newEntity TRUE TRUE FALSE {attr1: myAttr1, attr2: myAttr2}
myAttr1 myEntity My Attr 1 date FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
myAttr2 myEntity My Attr 2 int FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
attr1 newEntity Attr 1 string FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
attr2 newEntity Attr 2 string TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE

Entities options

Required columns

entity

unique name of the entity. If packages are provided, name must be unique within a package.

Optional columns

extends

reference to another entity that is extended

package

name of the group this entity is part of

abstract

indicate if data can be provided for this entity (abstract entities are only used for data modeling purposes but cannot accept data)

description

free text description of the entity

description-{languageCode}

description for specified language (can be multiple languages, example: description-nl)

backend

the backend (database) to store the entities in (currently only PostgreSQL)

tags

ability to tag the data referring to the tags sections, described below

Packages options

Required columns

name

unique name of the package. If parent package is provided the name is unique within the parent.

Optional columns

description

free text description of the package

parent

use when packages is a sub-package of another package

tags

mechanism to add flexible meta data such as ontology references, hyperlinks

Tags options (BETA)

Optionally, additional information can be provided beyond the standard meta data described above. Therefore all meta-data elements can be tagged in simple or advanced ways (equivalent to using RDF triples). For example, above in the packages example there is a 'homepage' tag provided. For example:

identifier label objectIRI relationLabel codeSystem relationIRI
like like
homepage http://www.molgenis.org http://www.molgenis.org homepage
docs http://some.url http://www.molgenis.org Documentation and Help EDAM http://edamontology.org/topic_3061

Required columns

identifier

unique name of this tag, such that it can be referenced

label

the human readable label of the tag (e.g. the 'like' tag as shown above).

Optional columns

objectIRI

url to the value object (will become an hyperlink in the user interface)

relationLabel

human readible label of the relation, e.g. 'Documentation and Help'

relationIRI

url to the relation definition, e.g. http://edamontology.org/topic_3061

codeSystem

name of the code system used, e.g. EDAM

Internationalization

You can internationalize attribute labels and descriptions, entity labels and descriptions and you can define internationalized versions of entity attributes.

entities

description-{languageCode} : description for specified language (can be multiple languages) label-{languageCode} : label for specified language (can be multiple languages)

Example:

name package description-en description-nl label-en label-nl
cities hospital list of cities lijst van steden Cities Steden
persons hospital list of persons lijst van personen Persons Personen

attributes

description-{languageCode} : description for specified language (can be multiple languages) label-{languageCode} : label for specified language (can be multiple languages)

Example:

name entity idAttribute description-en description-nl label-en label-nl
displayName patients TRUE Patient name Naam van de patient name naam
firstName patients Patient first name Voornaam van de patient first name voornaam
lastName patients Patient family name Achternaam van de patient family name achternaam

Language depended entity attributes

You can internationalize attributes by postfixing the name with -{countryCode}.

If this is the label attribute, you must set all city-xx labelAttribute values to 'TRUE' on the 'entities' tab.

Example:

entities:

name entity idAttribute label-nl label-de labelAttribute
name gender TRUE
genderlabel-nl gender Label (nl) Etikette (nl) TRUE
genderlabel-de gender Label (de) Etikette (de) TRUE

gender:

name genderlabel-nl genderlabel-de
Male Man Man
Female Vrouw Frau
Unknown Onbekend Unbekannt

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