nwb-schema NWBFile -> NWBSession

Moving here from https://github.com/NeurodataWithoutBorders/pynwb/issues/106 since this is a schema issue.

The refactoring of the NWB infrastructure has brought a much-needed separation of the concerns of the API, schema, and backend. In particular, the schema is now ostensibly agnostic to the specifics of the backend implementation. Practically, the only supported backend is HDF5 via the HDF5IO object in the form.backends.hdf5 module, however this can now be replaced with e.g. a database or filestore backend.

Despite this, the schema maintains the now-archaic "File" semantics.

I propose that we rename NWBFile to be NWBSession (or NWBExperiment or NWBDataset) & update descriptions of various attributes that reference the NWB "file" accordingly.

Sep 12 '17 04:09 neuromusic

I am in favor of NWBSession or NWBExperiment. PyNWB has a classed called 'NWBDataset', and there's a primitive concept of dataset in FORM and HDF5.

Sep 12 '17 19:09 ajtritt

To me the term NWBSession seems more consistent with the schema (compared to NWBExperiment) since NWBFile has, e.g., a session_start_time so using the term Session seams appropriate.

Sep 12 '17 19:09 oruebel