Allotrope Simple Model (ASM)

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The Allotrope Simple Model (ASM) is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)-based standard for the structure of instrument data.  Through its use of JSON, the de facto standard by which computers on the internet share data, the data in an ASM is designed to be easy to read, write, and transmit by any modern software system. Based upon an intuitive tabular approach,  it is a set of key/value pairs, where the keys describe the types of values represented, and are taken from the formal vocabulary defined in the Allotrope Foundation Ontology (AFO) to ensure consistency and standardization. This tabular approach can be easily  extended to allow the collection (aggregation) of related pieces of data  under a unified context and to provide a simple way to index a collection of similar data patterns (such as a set of peaks from a chromatogram, or a series of timepoint measurements). In doing so, the ASM provides a way to capture all of the relevant experimental data from a laboratory result in a simple, human-readable way.

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To ensure consistency, all ASMs can be easily machine validated using standardized JSON schemas.  The ASM schemas are maintained and published by Allotrope Foundation and used to describe and validate the structure of an ASM against the set of constraints that make up the ASM standard for a particular laboratory domain.