Managed upstream sources

Experimental, deployment-enabled pilot. Reviewed 22 September 2026. This feature manages source references and exact exports. QGIS can read reviewed GeoTIFF selections through Browse Workspace. OSDU writeback and native-client OSDU consumption remain outstanding.

A project can select assets from several approved connections. Your administrator configures endpoints, supported schema profiles and your upstream access. A connection is reusable; a selection chooses a particular source asset. Publication into another system is a separate action.

Select a source

1. Open your project’s Connections page and find Upstream sources.
2. Choose an approved connection. For OSDU, select a configured schema kind.
3. Browse and select an asset. Inspect declared context and unresolved information.
4. For a raster, choose any known quantity, unit, vertical reference and positive direction from the provided lists. These are separately recorded customer interpretations; they never rewrite the source. Leave unknowns unknown. A declared source unit cannot be relabelled.
5. Acknowledge the review and choose Follow or Pin.
6. Select Add source to project. This requires project administration.

The pilot supports bounded single-band GeoTIFF files, LAS 2.0 files, approved OSDU well/wellbore records, and a WellLog Parquet profile. Source values are not converted. Units, depth references and coordinate claims remain declarations, not independently verified facts. Project preferences never silently replace them.

Selections currently belong to the account whose upstream access is used. Project membership does not grant another person’s OSDU access. A source connection is not an automatic bulk copy into Ophiolite’s native asset store.

Updates and recovery

Check source now reconciles a due source. Successful checks are throttled to at least ten seconds. Automatic checks require a deployment worker; the interface does not install one. An uploaded browser file is a snapshot, not a watched laptop file.

Pause stops observation; Resume checks makes it eligible again. Changed scientific context requires Review context / update policy. An offline source retries with backoff; missing, denied or deleted sources require attention. A missing file is not proof of intentional deletion. Last accepted references remain visible.

Detach selection preserves its audit record and never deletes source data or copies already downloaded. Repointing an OSDU connection to a different partition or endpoint requires a new connection namespace.

Export and independent use

Export exact source bundle performs another upstream permission check and returns a JSON bundle containing a manifest and base64-encoded original representation. The SHA-256 digest covers those bytes. Keep the manifest alongside the decoded file.

import base64, hashlib, json
from pathlib import Path
bundle = json.loads(Path('source-bundle.json').read_text())
raw = base64.b64decode(bundle['payload_base64'], validate=True)
assert hashlib.sha256(raw).hexdigest() == bundle['manifest']['sha256']
Path('source.bin').write_bytes(raw)

Choose the output extension from manifest.media_type: GeoTIFF, LAS or Parquet. This example uses only Python’s standard library. Scientific analysis of the decoded file uses an appropriate independent reader.

A mutable file does not provide old versions. If it changes after pinning, a fresh read of the old bytes fails; keep exported snapshots when history matters. OSDU historical reads depend on the qualified domain service and retained upstream data.

Scope of evidence

Automated checks cover stable files, exact-byte export, authorization, context drift, follow/pin, restart, hint coalescing and refusal states. An actual browser exercise covers source selection and export through the native qualification project service. A separate live OSDU read checks 32,401 NLOG samples and 1,204 nulls against the existing baseline. These are bounded qualification results, not production support.

OSDU map profiles, writeback, customer token exchange, OSDU application consumption and object-store/laptop watches remain outstanding. See the source API reference.

QGIS file sources

After adding a reviewed GeoTIFF selection, use QGIS Browse Workspace to find it as an upstream file. Reads and preparation run in the background. The original TIFF bytes and missing-value representation are retained; the QGIS project CRS changes display only. This route is limited to 5 MiB TIFFs. QGIS follows the Workspace selection, so a selection pinned in Workspace stays pinned.

QGIS native tools can operate on the downloaded raster. Select a completed GeoTIFF result and choose Review / publish QGIS result. Select the exact source input and review the output quantity, unit and reference. Publication creates a separate native Ophiolite asset in the same project, retaining the source namespace, exact revision, byte hash and reviewed interpretation in lineage. It does not write to OSDU or alter the watched file. Results must fit the native import profile: at most 1.5 MB, 100,000 cells, one Float32/Float64 band and a declared supported horizontal CRS.

Return unchanged requires original bytes and unchanged reviewed declarations; it verifies the source and creates no asset. A re-encoded but numerically identical TIFF does not meet this strict source-return contract. Updating an external source is disabled. After creating a native derived asset, the established native-asset revision and conflict workflow applies to that separate asset.

The source publication path records a user-declared input association verified against an authorized source read. It does not claim to have observed arbitrary QGIS algorithm inputs or internal execution spans. Detailed native-processing telemetry for external source references remains a separate qualification gate.

An actual QGIS 4.2.2 Mac test exercises file following, a different project display CRS, the native Raster Calculator and publication with exact values/nulls and source lineage. See availability for the scope of this deployment-enabled qualification.