XraySpectroscopy/XAS-Data-Interchange — Issue #22: XDI for raw beamline data
Author: minkwe
Created: 2012-01-05 22:56:26+00:00
State: open

At our macromolecular crystallography beamlines, we have recently added the capability to do EXAFS on protein crystal samples. The interesting question for us which we hoped XDI would answer is: "What is the standard data format for interchange of raw EXAFS data"?

However, after reading the mailing lists, I got the impression that XDI use for raw data was actively discouraged and it is not obvious from the specs if I'm allowed to add my own column labels to add additional columns for raw counts and count rates, etc in order to preserve information which although non-"standard", might be useful in some cases and would be lost otherwise.

It will be a pity if authors of data collection software have to target additional ad-hoc data formats to enable interchange of raw data collected at their beamlines, when "XAS-Data-Interchange" format already exists.

My suggestion would be that it is fine to target "processed data" but do not develop a spec that forbids "raw data". The greatest catalyst for adoption is "users want it" and given the frustration I have heard from users dealing with multitudes of raw data file formats, supporting XDI for raw data will be a bonus.