Hi Gary, One other complication I forgot to mention. Compounds are usually run multiple times. So the same compound will appear with the same set of concentrations. In practice you would end up with column headers that have the same text in them, so this issue with using a Set vs String[] for the column names would complicate things.
> CSVFormat implements Serializable, so you can use plain old Java > serialization, it's not human readable, but it's something. > A human readable configuration would probably be a high priority. > > If we moved to Java 6, we could annotate CSVFormat with JAXB so you can > have XML IO. Personally, I do not think we should do our own XML IO, so > JAXB is the best path IMO since it is built-in Java 6. > It would be best if there were a CSVFormat serializer so that the CSVFormat could be injected. Using JAXB would be fine as a default implementation, but I imagine that the configuration format would change. Or that a user might decide to store individual configuration items in a database. > > What do you currently use to parse your CSV files? > Most biotech companies have their own home grown tools for parsing instrument files. There isn't a standard library. > > Would Commons-CSV work for you as well? If not, how so? > As I understand it, the code doesn't support "experiment condition"-type parameters, like this: Date: 12/10/13 Protocol: Selectivity Profile 1 Instrument Name: Gandalf Scientist: John Smith > Would you be willing to experiment with the current code? > > Sure. If the previous issues were addressed. I'm curious if other industries have similar issues? I assume that anyone that deals with instrument data might have similar needs. Mark
