ARC Metadata Registry
=====================

The registry application is a tool for integrated search and analysis of individual ARCs and experimental metadata. The web-based user interface provides a consolidated real-time view of the public ARCs within the DataPLANT community. The search functions of the ARC Registry application enable users to explore the ARCs and the assay/measurement data. The users can look up the ARCs by specific keywords, such as the working group they are interested in or by a particular data steward from the group. Most importantly, the users can also search and explore the experimental metadata from various ARCs simultaneously, thus, paving the way toward crossomics metadata exploration within the community. 

.. image:: images/ARCRegistry.png

The registry application receives data through push messages upon ARC updates from individual GitLab instances. It provides the latest snapshot of the ARCs across all DataHUBs at a given time. Also, it presents the evolution of the individual ARCs by keeping track of the history of the ARC updates. The ARC Metadata Registry is a cloud-native multi-service application, meaning that it consists of many Docker containers managed by Docker Swarm, allowing it to scale horizontally by adding more compute nodes. It supports insertion of ARCs by a) using a GitLab webhook/systemhook or b) manual insertion via API interface. Furthermore, users and credentials can be created in key-auth format to restrict access to use the registry application.

.. image:: images/ARCRegistry_Swarm.png

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Useful links:
   
   installation
   gitlabIntegrationOutbound
   gitlabIntegrationInbound
   webUI
   api
   databaseStructure
   license