Types of Gears - Utility and Analysis
Gears are classified into Utility gears and Analysis gears based on the purpose they fulfill. Generally speaking, Utility gears tend to run simpler, less resource intensive algorithms, frequently as pre-processing steps in a data pipeline, with outputs saved at project, subject, session, or acquisition level (often in same container as inputs). In contrast, Analysis gears tend to house more complex, resource intensive algorithms, with outputs isolated in gear-run-created Analysis containers.
Utility Gears
Utility Gears are either a conversion Gear, which takes data from one format to another, or a QA Gear, which provides quality assurance on the data. Utility Gears can also be called pre-processing Gears and can be assembled into a pipeline to run automatically. Utility gears place their outputs in the same container as the inputs, in contrast to Analysis Gears.
Instruction Steps
Viewing Gear Information: To view Gear information, hover over the Gear origins icon. A display will pop up that tells you the date and time the Gear was initiated, the file name and the file size.
Running a Utility Gear: To run a Utility Gear, select a Session from any Sessions list (Master Project View, Session Dashboard, or Search Results) and select the Acquisitions tab. Click theRun Utility Gear button in the top right corner of the Session Detail, then select Utility Gear. You will be prompted to select a Classifier, Conversion, or QA Gear from the drop-down menu, then you will be prompted to specify your input Files and to modify the configuration of the Gear if you wish. Once you have uploaded Files and are ready to run the Gear, click the Run Gear button.
Checking Gear Progress: To check on a Gear's progress, select the Provenance tab in the Session Detail. The Provenance tab provides a list of the Gears that have been run, their inputs, outputs, and allows you to view and download the log. Click the Refresh button to reload the page.
Cancel Running Gears: To cancel a running gear, select the Provenance tab in the Session Detail. If the gear is still running a Cancel button will appear next to the View Log button. Click the cancel button to cancel the running of the gear. Once the gear is canceled, any created output will be disposed of.
Suggested Files for Gears – A Gear manifest may optionally have a suggested File type for Files needed as input. If the type is specified, when you are asked to select Files to run the Gear, Flywheel will present those Files to the user at the top of the drop-down under the heading Suggested Files. All other Files will be presented under the heading Other Files.
Analysis Gears
Any Gears that perform an Analysis (or in other words and are not intended for classification, quality assurance, or conversion purposes), can be run from the Analysis tab and their outputs will be displayed there.
Instruction Steps
Running Analysis Gears: To run an Analysis Gear, navigate to the Sessions page, located under the Datasection of the Flywheel sidebar. Select a Session from the Sessions list, then select the Analysis tab at the top of the Session Detail. Click the Run Analysis Gear button at the top right side of the page. You will be prompted to select an Analysis Gear, select files, and label the analysis. Click Run Gear to start the analysis. Any outputs from this analysis will be displayed on the Analysis tab along with information about who created the analysis, when, the name of the job, and its status.
Note: it may take several minutes for a job to process, and you may need to refresh the page.
Managing Analyses: Once an analysis has been created, users can view or download the outputs in the Analysis tab. Users can also create notes about the analysis. Multiple analyses can exist on a single session. Users have the ability to modify a Gear and re-analyze data. To delete an analysis, click the accordion menu in the top right corner of the Session Detail, then select Delete.
