API concepts

Sessions

The "session" is the main unit of user interaction with OME. Storing information such as the experimenter ID, hostname, times of initial and most recent access, the session essentially provides a record of a user's interactions.

When a user logs into OME, they initially provide a user name and password. This gets used to create a session, which is then stored as a session file in /var/tmp/OME/sessions, using the Apache::Session::File package. In the future, this file is read to retrieve the parameters of the user's session. See OME/SessionManager.pm for details.

Factories

A factory is the object that interacts directly with the OME database. Implemented in OME/Factory.pm, factories contain code for creating objects, loading objects, finding objects that meet more or less specified criteria, etc. Each factory is associated with a session.

Like many of the other Perl modules, Factory.pm is self-documenting in a POD format. Type perldoc OME::Factory for more details.