DME User Guide

NCI offers two data management resources to store, manage, and archive large research datasets, as follows:

• The NCI Data Management Environment (DME) offers open-ended storage and management of large scientific 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. In the Data Vault, data are managed 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.

How do these resources work together? 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 storage of user-defined metadata with registered data at different points in the data life cycle. In addition, DME offers search capabilities to identify this data and attach a value factor to each dataset. A Division/Office/Center (DOC) can define its own metadata structure and data hierarchy rules, and grant permission to users as needed.

Who can access the DME? 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.