SODAR Core: a Django-based framework for scientific data management and analysis web apps

Modern life science is generating large data sets at a unprecedented speed. A major source of data are so-called omics (e.g., genomics, metabolomics, or proteomics) experiments. Consequently, management and analysis of scientific data has become a major challenge. Further, the heterogeneity of projects makes "one size fits all" data analysis systems infeasible and calls for specialized data analysis platforms.

The authors are actively developing applications for the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reuseable) data management of omics data and their analysis. In order to prevent duplication of work, we have extracted the commonly useful components into SODAR Core, a Python framework on top of Django. It is used in our actively developed applications and also proved useful in internal web app prototypes.

Examples for using SODAR Core in the development of scientific data management web apps is Digestiflow and the Filesfolders module shipping with SODAR Core. An example for using SODAR Core in the development of scientific data analysis web apps is VarFish