As every user’s requirements and data formats are different, only you can decide how SDE can best assist with your work. However, before such decisions can be made effectively, you will require a general understanding of SDE and its capabilities. Therefore this set of tutorials is designed to provide an ideal starting point to the new SDE user, by using the different data views and functionalities available to perform a series of commonly performed SDE tasks on real datasets. Once you have a good overview of the product, the manual and help files can give you any more detailed information you need on the areas that are most relevant to you.

Each of the tasks outlined in the tutorials is based on a different sample dataset. The datasets used are taken from a variety of the different SDE application areas, varying from ECG and EEG readings to electrical signal processing. However, all are designed so that they can be understood and completed without specialist knowledge in the subject areas and the techniques that will be taught will be applicable to any SDE application. The sample datasets can be opened directly from this webpage using the SDE protocol or downloaded onto your local disk. As one of the data files for tutorial 3 is quite large, it may be beneficial to download this whilst completing the earlier tutorials.

The following tutorials are available and it is recommended that they are completed in order. Click on the "Open Tutorial" link to begin.

Define a spike/event by selecting an example template and specifying how similar in scale and shape potential spikes must be to this template, if they are to be considered a match. Use SDE to very rapidly locate any occurrences of the defined spike/event, replacing the analogue time series data with binary event data, indicating all the spike positions.

This tutorial will show you how to search for a broad range of spiking behaviour across multiple data channels and how to perform spike sorting, by independently selecting and classifying different spike shapes. Note that although this tutorial classifies the search procedure as spike detection, the techniques demonstrated can be similarly applied to other forms of event detection, such as the identification of ramps or steps.

Introduces the user to the main search facility within SDE, explaining the types of search available and the scenarios in which they are useful. This tutorial will show you how to locate the normal heartbeats in an ECG recording containing considerable irregular behaviour, whilst discussing each of the search parameters and the effect they have on the search performed. You will then be shown how to assess the results and improve the search and, once you are happy with the search definition, how to use or store the results obtained.

The second stage of this tutorial explains how the pattern finder facility can be used to create a library of important patterns and locate these with the current data file.

Learn how to use the task planner, available as part of the SDE professional package, to create more powerful search tasks, which can identify multiple, different, coincident patterns, across multiple variables. You will be taken through the full process of defining a series of tasks, which identify occurrences of coincident spiking activity across multiple variables.

Firstly you will investigate the data and plan how to effectively define the tasks. In stage 2 you will create the tasks using the task planner interface and then, in the final stage, you will assess the performance of your task library and make any improvements required to obtain perfect search results. An example of a perfectly functioning task library is available for download. This can be loaded into SDE if you are in need of assistance.

In order to use the task planner, the features on which you will be searching need to be defined in your variable configuration file. Details of the configuration file can be found in chapter 7 of the User Manual, but for this tutorial a feature_def.cfg file is supplied below. If you have downloaded the SDE version from the website, this configuration file will already be in place. However, if you have a bespoke version, you may need to copy the feature_def.cfg file below to the following locations before starting the final tutorial.

If you have Windows XP, copy the feature_def.cfg file to the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\SDExplorer

If you have Windows Vista or 7, copy the feature_def.cfg file to this location:

C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Local\SDExplorer

Note that these locations are often classified as hidden directories.