The help for the specimen archive file formats lists a field called "frozen_time" and describes it as "Date / time when frozen", an attribute of the event.
Our LIMS (LDMS) provides us with the date and time the specimen was frozen, and I tried to include it in my archive file. However, the labkey field (SpecimenEvent.FrozenTime) only shows a time. I changed the formatting to include a the date, and then it always shows Jan 1, 1970, not the date that was included in my archive. I noticed that the field description says "duration of the freezing process", which would imply that this field cannot hold a date at all.
Is there a place in labkey to store the date and time a specimen was frozen? And if so, where? Or is the archive help just wrong, and only a freezing duration can be stored?
(Just as a side note - the archive help has a similar field processing_time, supposedly to hold the time when a sample was processed. In reality, this field ends up being a processing duration. But for processing, there is also a field called processing_date, described in the archive help as "date when processed" which can really store both a processing date and time. Unfortunately I don't see a frozen_date field that would serve that same function)
Thanks,
Jen |
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| Dave Bradlee responded: |
2013-12-02 14:41 |
Hi Jen,
You are correct that frozen_time is TimeOnly. The Specimen Archive documentation is incorrect and should say that this field is the Time when frozen, not Date/Time. And there is no corresponding field frozen_date. So, the bottom line is that there is currently no place to store the date a specimen is frozen if that date needs to be distinct from other dates that can appear in the archive, such as storage_date.
Thanks.
Dave |
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| jeckels responded: |
2013-12-04 12:55 |
Hi Jen,
A related followup note is that we're currently working on making the specimen tables customizable, which might allow you to track this kind of information in a custom column in the future.
In November, we did the work to move the specimen tables over to an implementation that allows us to add custom columns on a per-container/study basis, though we haven't yet enabled customization.
In December, we plan to continue to allow customization of the columns. I expect that there will continue to be the base set of columns that are required (much as datasets have some required columns, like ParticipantId).
If this is of interest to you, I can see if there's a spec that's ready for sharing.
Thanks,
Josh |
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| jdutra responded: |
2013-12-04 13:03 |
Thanks for the responses. Josh, in addition to the date frozen, we are currently "borrowing" several columns in the specimen tables and using them for our own purposes, so custom columns would definitely be of interest to us. We'd love to see the spec whenever it's ready. I appreciate the followup.
Jen |
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