Gear Type and Gear Access
Flywheel gears are containerized algorithms that vary both in what they do and in how they interact with the Flywheel platform. Gears vary in the type of access they have to the Flywheel data.
Tip
This article is about a gear's access to data in Flywheel. If you are looking for information on user's access to gears on the site, see Setting Gear Access
Gear type
Gears fall into two broad categories: Utility gears and Analysis gears. Utility gears tend to run simpler, less resource-intensive algorithms, frequently as pre-processing steps in a data pipeline, with outputs saved to project, subject, session, or acquisition containers (often the same container as the inputs). Analysis gears tend to house more complex, resource-intensive algorithms, with outputs isolated in gear-run-created Analysis containers.
The below table summarizes some of the key differences between Utility and Analysis gears.
The following diagrams show where each gear type places its outputs in the container hierarchy.
Gear access to Flywheel Data
Gears also vary in the access they're provided, which is determined by several factors:
- How the gear is launched.
- The launching user's data access permissions.
- The instance-level permission configuration.
- The gear's own manifest definition.
Details are shown in the table below, based on the API key configuration in the gear manifest.
* Admin configurable for releases > 16.13. Assumes Docker-based (non-HPC) runs.