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The HDS-Toolbox provides an object oriented way to access large quantities of data and meta-data in a structured and intuitive way using Matlab. It offers great flexibility by allowing the user to define a hierarchical structure of class definitions that specify the content of the database. Objects of these classes can be linked using intuitive syntax and accessed in the same way as standard Matlab structures. Although the database handles as a Matlab structure, the toolbox stores each object on disk separately.

This approach enables the user to create ‘virtual’ Matlab structures that contain Gigabytes of data without running out of memory. Objects are loaded from disk dynamically, which maximizes access speed while minimizing the memory requirements.

Setup

Download the code into a folder and modify the MATLAB path to include the 'HDS-Toolbox' folder and the 'HDS-Toolbox/Examples' folder. You can check whether the Toolbox is working using the command:

which HDS

This should return the 'HDS.m' file in the '@HDS' folder. To see the HDS-Toolbox help files in the Matlab help, make sure that the 'all Toolboxes' checkbox is checked in the help section of the MATLAB preferences.

Tutorials

Visit the following pages for some short tutorials

Tutorial 1 ( Visualizing the database )

Tutorial 2 ( Creating the first database )

Tutorial 3 ( Creating your own classes )

Disclaimer

This Wiki is intended to provide some examples and tutorials on how to use the HDS-Toolbox. It will also contain more technical information about the file-structure and memory-structure that is used by the Toolbox. As I am developing this project in my free time, it is likely that the process of getting all the documentation online will take a while.

Also, keep in mind that this project is under active development; I cannot take responsibility for any damage, loss of data and other unfortunate events that are related to using this code. Please, always backup your original data!