platform

name	platform
description	How to use the Odoo-based TVBO platform at tvbo.charite.de — retrieve curated knowledge, manage your account, share SimulationExperiments and Studies (public or with API key), and load them back into Python.
metadata	{"audience":"user","applies_to":["**/*.py","**/*.ipynb"],"tags":["platform","odoo","rest-api","sharing"],"requires_extras":["api"]}

The TVBO Platform

tvbo.charite.de is the Odoo-based management layer for everything ontology-backed. It is not the Python package — it's a separate service that the Python package talks to.

What the platform does

1. Displays knowledge — browse the ontology, curated models, parcellations, and atlases.
2. Lets users retrieve knowledge programmatically via the REST API.
3. Lets users set up their own models — define Dynamics, Network, Experiment records through the web UI.
4. Stores and shares SimulationExperiments and SimulationStudys:
   • Public experiments are visible to everyone.
   • Private experiments require an API key tied to a user account.
5. Loads experiments back into Python — fetch a record by ID, get a fully constructed SimulationExperiment you can run().

Roadmap: ask-and-discuss layer for the community to comment on shared experiments and studies.

Accessing the platform from Python

The REST client lives in tvbo.api (install with pip install tvbo[api]):

from tvbo.api import ...  # see tvbo/api/ for the exact entry points

Key modules:

• tvbo/api/ontology_api.py — ontology queries
• tvbo/api/dynamics_api.py — fetch/store Dynamics
• tvbo/api/experiment_api.py — fetch/store SimulationExperiments
• tvbo/api/network_api.py — fetch/store Networks
• tvbo/api/main.py — FastAPI app entry point (for running a local mirror)

Authentication

Public reads work without auth. For private records:

1. Create an account at https://tvbo.charite.de.
2. Generate an API key from your account page.
3. Provide it to the client (mechanism documented per-endpoint).

Treat API keys like passwords: don't commit them. Use environment variables or a secrets manager.

When to use the platform vs local files

• Use the platform when you want other people to be able to reproduce your run without you mailing them a YAML file.
• Use local files when you're iterating and don't need persistence.
• Hybrid: prototype locally, push the final experiment to the platform with a DOI-like identifier for citation.

Heads-up

• The platform is the system of record for shared experiments. If you re-run a shared experiment locally and get different results, check that you fetched the exact stored revision (the platform versions records).
• The Odoo backend is a separate codebase from the tvbo Python package. Issues with the web UI or auth go through platform-side support, not the GitHub repo.