## Scientific terms
> Public service announcement: I'm not a physicist.

* PLD deposition: fabrication method.
* Sample: what is being produced by a deposition. A sample is made up of different stacked layers of material (target) deposited upon another material (substrate).
* Target: material "consumed" during the deposition.
* Substrate: material on which the target is deposited.
* Compound: which material is a target or a substrate made of; substrates of the same batch are made of the same compound.
* Layer: one of the layers of material of which a sample is composed; every layer can have different properties, both in the physical sense (i.e. shape, thickness...) and regarding their manufacturing process (i.e. frequency of pulses, deposition temperature and pressure...).

## eLabFTW glossary
> PSA: I'm not a Deltablot developer either.

* Experiment: main type of entry on eLabFTW, used to store data related to the single experiment.
* Resource or Item: secondary type of entry on eLabFTW, used to store data related to resources such as raw materials, instruments, machinery etc.
* Elabid: unique ID used to identify a resource or an experiment; resources and experiments have different indexing and different API endpoints.
* Categories: experiments or resources with common characteristics are associated by assigning them to the same category - e.g. experiments flagged as "PLD Deposition" contain data on a layer of a sample; categories also come with a mask of parameters (extra fields) which need to be compiled by the user.
* Metadata: extra data; in eLabFTW it all falls under either the key "metadata" (as a single string of text) or the key "metadata_decoded". Metadata is then divided into "extra_fields" and "extra_fields_groups" - of which usually only the first one contains relevant metadata.
* ReST API: [something I use to get my JSON files](https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/api/what-is-a-rest-api); endpoints are the URLs I point my requests to.
* JSON: fancy dictionaries with important data.

### Endpoints
API URL: `https://{ELAB_BASE_URL}:{PORT}/api/v2`

#### GET, PATCH, DELETE
* `/items/{elabid}`: data on a resource identified by its elabid.
* `/experiments/{elabid}`: data on an experiment identified by its elabid.

## What is what
At CNR-SPIN @Na we use eLabFTW resources to store:
* Our samples;
* Our instruments;
* Our substrate batches and our PLD targets;
* The compounds substrates and targets are made of (incl. chemical formula);
* Other things.

We use experiments to store:
* Our laboratory journals;
* The layers a sample is made up of.
