PMA.core 3

In order for PMA.core to show content, you need to set up root directories. A root directory is a starting location from which your various whole slide images will be hosted.

The reason for working with root directories offers several advantages:

• You don't have to navigate through a complicated directory structure before reaching the files that you want to work with
• You can map multiple root directories to organize slides according to different purposes or workflows.
• Swtich out different types of storage without the end-user knowing about it. When you move data from a conventional hard disk to cloud, you typically need to install a new piece of software (S3 browser, or an FTP explorer). With PMA.core, you just re-direct the root-directory to point to the updated location and you're done; the end-user remains unaffected

The concept of root directories is not dissimilar to mapped network drives in the Microsoft Windows operating system, where you map a map such as \\myserver\dir\subdir\subsubdir\ to a (much simpler to remember and address) drive letter.

One (minimal) downside of root directories is that you actually have to set them up.

The root directories refer to the base directories where the system should look into for whole slide images. All the subdirectories of the root directories are exposed by the application and whole slide images that are discovered are advertised. A root directory may either be a local directory, a UNC share, Azure blob storage, FTP folder, or an Amazon S3 compatible storage.

This section allows the addition of new directories as well as the editing and deletion of existing ones.

Each root directory is given an alias by which it is referred. The alias must be unique, irrespective of its casing. This means that if you have a root-directory with an alias “RoOt”, you cannot also have another root-directory with a alias “rOoT”.

The path of a directory must be an absolute path accessible by the host computer. Should the path not exist, an error message is shown:

You can edit already existing root directories by clicking on the pencil behind each entry in the overview table:

Similarly, you may delete root directories by clicking on the delete icon behind each entry. A confirmation prompt at this point will give you one last chance to reconsider: