Studies can be exported, imported, and reloaded to make it easy to transfer them between servers, duplicate them within a server, and synchronize them with a primary database. They are a version of a folder archive, with additional objects.

A few common usage scenarios:

• Studies can be exported and reimported to transfer from a staging environment to a production server.
• A snapshot of one study can be exported and imported into several new studies so that they share a common baseline.
• A brand new study can be generated with the exported structure (with or without the data) of an existing study. This allows very rapid creation of new studies based on templates.
• The structure of an existing set of studies can also be standardized by importing selected structural elements from a common template.
• A study can be exported masking all identifying information enabling the sharing of results without sharing PHI or any patient or clinic details.

Topics

• Export a Study - Export a study to a folder archive, either as exploded files or as a zip file.
• Import a Study - Import a study from a folder archive.
• Reload a Study - Reload a study manually or via script using the API.
• Study Object Files and Formats - This topic explains in detail the formats of the exported archive files, including core data files (TSV or Excel) and XML metadata files.

Related Topics

• Publish a Study - Export selected study data to a subfolder, typically for wider distribution. Publishing a study lets you control which, if any, PHI data is included in the subfolder.
• Ancillary Studies - Export selected study data, typically to test new hypotheses.
• Export / Import a Folder - Importing and exporting a folder are described in this topic.
• LabKey XML Schema Reference