IGOR

Data extraction in IGOR is a work in progress, but a number of users have found a successful route to querying the data and manipulating it in the IGOR environment. The installation and setup for these features requires an understanding of setup and use of ODBC drivers as well as rudimentary programming within the IGOR environment. To date, this has been tested on Mac OS X 10.9. Details may vary for other systems.

Activating SQL Database Access in IGOR

Database functionality in IGOR is preloaded, but not activated for use in the standard installation of SQL.xop. To activate this feature follow the instructions detailed in the “Igor Pro Folder/More Extensions/utilities/SQL Help.ihf”. The next few steps are reproduced from the IGOR instructions. First, activate the step in the activation process is open the folder, “Igor Pro Folder/More Extensions/utilities” and create an alias for SQL.xop. Then move the alias to “Igor Pro/Igor Extensions” or a similar folder that is in the search path for IGOR. It may be necessary to delete the “alias” text from the file name for functionality. Restart IGOR to activate.

IGOR relies on an external ODBC driver for database access. Depending on the operating system, it may be necessary to install a stand alone ODBC driver administrator package. First check your machine for the ODBC administrator.app in the ~/Applications/Utilities folder. If not present ODBC administrator can be downloaded directly from the Apple support pages. To test the functionality, it is useful to follow the Installing MySQL ODBC Driver… instructions on the IGOR help page. The MySQL drivers are not necessary for functionally within MOSAIC.

With the ODBC administrator program installed, the next step is to install the SQLite driver for IGOR necessary to interface with the database. Once downloaded run the installation package in “sqlite3-odbc-0.93.dmg” and follow the setup instructions within the disk image. The driver should be ready to use within IGOR.

Hint

The IGOR addon installation (described above) can be activated automatically on Mac OS X by issuing the command python setup.py mosaic_addons --igor from the MOSAIC root directory. Note that administrator privileges are required.

Simple Database Query in IGOR

IGOR operates on databases with a single High Level operation command. This one command handles the database connection, query, export of data and closing of the database in one simple function or macro. To access this functionality, first open the procedure window and create the following function:

#include <SQLUtils>

Function QuerySQLData()

        String connectionStr= "DRIVER={SQLite3 Driver};DATABASE='database path';"
        String statement = "select Blockdepth, ResTime from metadata where ProcessingStatus ='normal'"

        SQLHighLevelOp/CSTR={connectionStr, SQL_Driver_COMPLETE}/O/E=1 statement
End

Running this function will extract all normal events and create two waves containing the Blockade depth and Residence time of the events in sequence for further processing in IGOR. Two IGOR functions are included in the /addon/IGOR/ folder that import the data into IGOR waves for further processing. To open these functions to run, simply double click the file and the procedures will be opened in a new IGOR project. Once open, the procedure file can be compiled within IGOR to enable the code. A new menu “Mosaic” should then appear in the title bar within IGOR. A function “Fetch SQL data” will bring up a dialog box to manually enter a search string. After entering the string and clicking continue, you will be prompted to locate the database file you wish to access. The data will be imported into waves with the name automatically imported from the database. Warning: this will overwrite any existing data that is called by identical wave names.