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Channeling the data deluge

With vast increases in biological data generation, mechanisms for data storage and analysis have become limiting. A data structure, semantically typed data hypercubes (SDCubes), that combines hierarchical data format version 5 (HDF5) and extensible markup language (XML) file formats, now permits the flexible storage, annotation and retrieval of large and heterogenous datasets.

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Figure 1: A cartoon representation of data packaging into SDCubes.

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Correspondence to Jason R Swedlow.

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Competing interests

J.R.S. founded and directs the Open Microscopy Environment and Glencoe Software, Inc., which build data management solutions for imaging in the life sciences. C.B. is employed by Google UK, Ltd., which delivers search and data tools for the world community.

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Swedlow, J., Zanetti, G. & Best, C. Channeling the data deluge. Nat Methods 8, 463–465 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1616

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