IT Center Changes

For everyone using our API: Some endpoints have been revised and are now more clearly structured, functionally expanded, and generally easier to use. Specifically, this means that interactions with a resource’s metadata and graphs will now take place via Graph, GraphMetadata and GraphMetadataContent. Access to objects and files can now be found under Storage and StorageContent. If you use these functions in your scripts, they must be updated promptly. The previous endpoints are already marked as deprecated in the Swagger documentation and are expected to be disabled in August. We will inform you of this again in advance via the newsletter and through relevant notices on the platform.

Important information for reviewers of storage space requests: The “Restrictedly suitable” option is no longer available as a final review result. As of March 16, 2026, reviewers must now choose between ‘suitable’ and “not suitable.” RDM staff and 1st-level support have already been informed of this change during the monthly consultation hour. If you are part of the RDM staff but have not yet received an invitation to the monthly consultation hour, please feel free to contact us via e-mail. You are also welcome to check out the support services.

For an analysis of the joint use of Coscine and the RWTH HPC system, we are looking for people who actively use both services. The aim is to gain a better understanding of typical use cases, workflows, and data flows. Your experiences will help us to further develop support structures and tools in a targeted manner and align them with the actual needs of users. By sharing your approaches and perspectives with us, you will make an important contribution to the optimization and further development of both systems. If you are interested in participating, we look forward to hearing from you at servicedesk@rwth-aachen.de. Thank you for your support!

An additional visual change concerns the Coscine website. The familiar workflow graphic is now interactive and provides a good starting point for new users.

The display of storage space blocked by versions in the web interface will be available on March 3, 2026. This will give researchers a more transparent overview of storage space already used and still available.

The “Create” button in the second step of resource creation was temporarily not working. The development team has now fixed the bug. The button will be functional again with the next live deployment on March 3, 2026.

At the request of RDM staff, we have opened a Zenodo Community for Coscine. All documents, presentations, etc. relevant to Coscine are welcome to be uploaded to the community. Service Management will review submissions before adding them.

It is currently not possible to delete folders. We will add a note to the Coscine documentation as soon as possible. In addition, the development team is already working intensively on a solution.

You may currently see more projects in Coscine than before. This is because subprojects of a deleted main project were no longer displayed but were not deleted in the background. This has now been fixed by the development team, so that subprojects are now displayed as main projects.

The next live deployment will bring another new feature: a timestamp for the creation date of the project or resource will be added to the project and resource settings. This will help both Coscine users and the support team to classify problems or malfunctions in terms of time.