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Sustainability Roadmap between DataJoint Elements and Neurodata Without Borders

datajoint NWB

Aim

DataJoint Elements and Neurodata Without Borders (NWB) are two neuroinformatics initiatives in active development. The projects develop independently yet they have complementary aims and overlapping user communities. This document establishes key processes for coordinating development and communications in order to promote integration and interoperability across the two ecosystems.

Projects and Teams

DataJoint

DataJoint Elements — https://datajoint.com/docs/elements/ — is a collection of open-source reference database schemas and analysis workflows for neurophysiology experiments, supported by DataJoint — https://datajoint.com/docs/core/ — an open-source software framework. The project is funded by the NIH grant U24 NS116470 and led by Dr. Dimitri Yatsenko.

The principal developer of DataJoint Elements and the DataJoint framework is the company DataJoint — https://datajoint.com.

Neurodata without Borders (NWB)

NWB - https://www.nwb.org — is a data standard for neurophysiology, providing neuroscientists with a common standard to share, archive, use, and build analysis tools for neurophysiology data. The project is funded by the NIH grant U24 NS120057 and led by Dr. Oliver Rubel (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and Dr. Benjamin Dichter (Catalyst Neuro).

The principal developers of NWB are the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Catalyst Neuro.

General Principles

No obligation

The developers of the two ecosystems acknowledge that this roadmap document creates no contractual relationship between them but they agree to work together in the spirit of partnership to ensure that there is a united, visible, and responsive leadership and to demonstrate administrative and managerial commitment to coordinate development and communications.

Coordinated Development

The two projects will coordinate their development approaches to ensure maximum interoperability. This includes:

  • coordinated use of terminology and nomenclatures
  • support for testing infrastructure: unit testing and integration testing
  • a coordinated software release process and versioning
  • coordinated resolution of issues arising from joint use of the two tools

Points of Contact

To achieve the aims of coordinated development, both projects appoint a primary point of contact (POC) to respond to questions relating to the integration and interoperability of DataJoint Elements and NWB.

For 2022, the DataJoint Elements POC is Dr. Kushal Bakshi (kushal@datajoint.com)

For 2022, the NWB POC is Dr. Ryan Ly (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Annual Review

To achieve the aims of coordinated development, the principal developers conduct a joint annual review of this roadmap document to ensure that the two programs are well integrated and not redundant. The contents and resolutions of the review will be made publicly available.

Licensing

The two parties ensure that relevant software components are developed under licenses that avoid any hindrance to integration and interoperability between DataJoint Elements workflows and NWB utilities.