In OMERO what are atime/ctime/mtime, and how are they used?

These stand for:

• access time
• creation time
• modification time

They are to allow clients to write as much information as is available on the linux file system into the database. These values are left in the user space, i.e. the server doesn't try to control them, for example when you access a file the atime is NOT incremented.

These are defined in "file system" terms as opposed to "biologist" frame of reference, where creation could be the "acquisition" timestamp. This acquisition information is stored in the OME data model.