Pseudonymisation
Last updated
Last updated
It's possible to define your own format for automatically generated identifiers that increment sequentially. These can be used as pseudonyms for your rows. On this page we will use the following sequence, but you can configure the prefix and number of digits to your liking.
Besides incrementing sequentially, the digit part of th ids can also be scrambled:
These are not random: the generated ids are guaranteed to be unique and are based on the incrementing sequence.
Note: Be aware that the scrambled identifiers will repeat when all possibilities are exhausted. So make sure that the length of the digit-part is sufficient for your use case!
To configure an attribute as an incrementing identifier, first make sure the attribute has the following properties:
To begin, you should create two tags. You can add them to the tags sheet of your EMX file or just create them in the Data Explorer. In a tag with relation IRI obo:IAO_0000596 you specify the number of digits. In the other tag with relation IRI obo:IAO_0000599 you specify the ID prefix. The actual values you want to use should go in the values attribute. Here are the tags for the sequence we're looking at:
| identifier | relationLabel | relationIRI | value |
|---|---|---|---|
Now it's time to add the tags to your id-attribute. You can do this in the Data Explorer (by going to the Attribute entity type and editing your attribute), or you can make it part of the model in your EMX file:
If you want the identifiers to be scrambled, you should also add the scrambled tag to the attribute:
To keep track of a sequence's current value, it is stored in the database. To interact with a sequence there are two endpoints available:
GET <host>/plugin/metadata-manager/sequencesReturns the sequences present in the database.
POST <host>/plugin/metadata-manager/sequences/<sequence_id>?value=123Sets a sequence to a specific value. Keep in mind that the sequence identifiers contain number signs (#). These need to be URL escaped with %23.
A sequence's current value is not carried over when copying, exporting, migrating or re-importing a dataset. When you import/migrate a dataset that had sequences in it, do the following:
Make sure everything is configured correctly (see How to configure)
Use the GET /sequences endpoint to retrieve the sequences in the database and find the one you need
Look at your dataset's last rows and figure out what the value for the sequence should be
Use the POST /sequences endpoint to set the sequence's value
| name | dataType | nillable | idAttribute | tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| name | dataType | nillable | idAttribute | tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
hasIDDigitCount7
hasIDDigitCount
http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/IAO_0000596
7
hasIDPrefixGen
hasIDPrefix
http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/IAO_0000599
GEN-
pseudonym
string
false
AUTO
hasIDDigitCount7,hasIDPrefixGen
pseudonym
string
false
AUTO
hasIDDigitCount7,hasIDPrefixGen,scrambled