geWorkbench

Introduction

The Menu Bar is located at the top of the geWorkbench graphical interface, and provides access to important actions, settings and information.

This section will briefly cover the individual menu items. Some items have their own more extensive documentation, and links to this will be provided.

The first two items in the menu, "File" and "Edit", apply to the Project Folders component, described in the next section.

Background on the Project Folders component

In brief, the Project Folders component is used for data organization and management. It contains four types of "nodes", arranged in a hierarchical fashion.

• Workspace - A workspace contains all the data for a geWorkbench session. Only one workspace can be present at a time. A workspace can be saved and reloaded. Workspaces are used to hold one or more projects.
• Project - A project is used to hold the data and the analysis results for a particular experiment. A workspace can contain more than one project, and one can easily switch between projects.
• Data nodes - These contain data either loaded from files on disk or retrieved from the network.
• Result nodes - After an analysis is done in geWorkbench, a result node is created as a child of the data node from which it was created.

The following diagram shows the Project Folders component with a single data node and its child t-test analysis result node.

Further details about the Project Folders component can be found in the Projects section.

File

The following choices are available under the File menu.

Open

• File - Open a specific data file from disk. A Project node must be selected in the Project Folders component. A standard file browser will appear, and the user can select from any of the file types that geWorkbench can directly load. The data file will be loaded into the selected project. If no project node yet exists, one must be created before a data file can be loaded.
  • Note - The Open File action is also available by right-clicking on a Project node.
• Workspace - Open a previously saved geWorkbench workspace. A standard file browser will appear with which to locate the desired workspace file. As shown in the figure below, a dialog will appear warning the user that the current workspace will be overwritten. The user is offered the option to save the current workspace before proceeding. "Open Workspace" can be used regardless of what node is currently selected in the Project Folders component.

Save

• Workspace - Save the current geWorkbench workspace to a file on disk. All projects, data and result nodes will be saved.

New

• Workspace - Create a new workspace in the Project Folders component. Doing so will destroy the existing workspace, so the user will be prompted as to whether to save the current workspace. This is shown in the diagram below.
• Project - Within a workspace, create a new project. Any number of projects can be created in a workspace.

Export

• Export the microarray dataset currently selected in the Project Folders component in the "Affymetrix Matrix File Format" (.exp). This format preserves array sets that may have been defined.

Merge Datasets

If more than one data file originating from the same platform has been loaded into a project, the datasets can be merged into one for analysis.

Remove

This option will remove a project or a data node under the project from the Project Folders component. It will not remove a top-level workspace.

Exit

Close geWorkbench. The user will be prompted as to whether to save the workspace before closing.

Edit

Rename

• Project - Rename the currently selected project. (Also works when a project child node is selected).
• File - Rename the currently selected data or result node.

Commands

Tools

Component Configuration

geWorkbench has a large selection of components applicable to many different areas of biological data analysis. A particular investigator may wish to load only the components needed for his or her own analysis.

The Component Configuration Manager allows individual geWorkbench components to be loaded or unloaded. Full details on its use are available in the Component Configuration Manager tutorial chapter.

Preferences

genSpace

genSpace is covered in its own chapter in these tutorials.

Help

Help Topics

geWorkbench has self-contained help chapters for a number of its components. These chapters are installed directly on the machine with geWorkbench and do not depend on network connectivity. They are implemented using the Java Help component. In most cases, the content is similar or identical to the material available in the corresponding geWorkbench tutorial sections.

Chapters are navigated by clicking on the desired chapter or section in the list on the left side of the component, the material is displayed in the built-in browser on the right-hand side of the component.

Links to external sites

geWorkbench.org - This is the URL of the geWorkbench project home page. It contains full information about geWorkbench.

Knowledge Center - The National Cancer Institute's Molecular Analysis Tools Knowledge Center provides user support for geWorkbench.

Release and System Information

About - Displays the geWorkbench startup splash screen with developer credits.

Show Welcome Screen - The first time a new version of geWorkbench is started, this screen is displayed. This menu item will redisplay the welcome screen.

System Info - Displays information about the operating system, the Java version and Java memory usage.

Version Info - Displays the version number of the currently running copy of geWorkbench. It also displays the date on which that version was created.