...
The effect of this architecture is that repeated uploads or downloads of an entity's file are avoided when the local copy is not modified. This strategy does not avoid repeated downloads of an entity's file to a variety of local folders. We feel that the potential efficiency gains of doing this are outweighed by the complexity of tracking multiple, mutable copies of a file.
File Usage Examples
Example 1: Create File object wrapping local file, save to Synapse, retrieve for additional editing, and save again
synStore()
synGet()
getFileLocation()
"/Users/johndoe/Downloads/myscript.txt"
# retrieve for additional editing (no location specified), and save again
# retrieve once more, no location specified
Example 2: Retrieve File from Synapse given entity ID
Example 3: Link to File on web, then download
Command Set
We conceptual divide the client commands into three levels (1) Common functions, (2) Advanced functions and (3) low-level Web API functions. The first collection of commands captures the majority of functionality of interest to users. The second collection rounds out the functionality with less frequently used functions. The third set comprises simple, low level wrappers around the Synapse web service interface. By including this third set users can access web services in advance of having specialized commands in the analytic clients.
...