DME User Guide

The NCI Data Management Environment (DME) offers open-ended storage and management of scientific research datasets. It eliminates the need to maintain redundant copies of large heterogenous data and provides the ability to annotate, retrieve, and share datasets for further research, analysis, and collaboration.

The NCI Data Vault serves as the archive store for these datasets. It provides scalable, virtualized, high-reliability storage that is transparent to the end user. Data are stored as objects, which are organized into collections (folders), and a collection might have one or more collections within it. A collection can be identified by a custom collection type such as Project, Study, Sample, and so on, the default being Folder.

DME provides an entry point to archive data to the NCI Data Vault, and to manage, transfer, access, and share data across disparate systems securely and efficiently. DME allows you to associate user-defined metadata to registered data at different points in the data life cycle. In addition, DME offers search capabilities to identify this data. A Division/Office/Center (DOC) can define its own metadata structure and data hierarchy rules, and grant permission to users as needed.

If you have an NIH account, the NCI Data Vault team can give you access to DME. For access requests or any other questions, contact NCIDataVault@mail.nih.gov. 

This user guide describes the capabilities of DME. In some cases, you can choose whether to perform each activity using the web application's graphical user interface (GUI) or Command Line Utilities (CLU). 

• If you want fine-grained control of the activity, or if you want to integrate it into your scientific workflow, consider using CLU. 
• Otherwise, consider using the GUI.