Intelligent client for integrating bioinformatics services.
BACKGROUND
In addition to existing bioinformatics software, a lot of new tools are being developed world wide to supply services for an ever growing, widely dispersed and heterogeneous collection of biological data. The integration of these resources under a common platform is a challenging task. To this end, several groups are developing integration technologies, in which services are usually registered in some sort of catalogue to allow novel discovering and accessing mechanisms to be implemented. However, each service demands specific interfaces to accommodate their parameters and it is a complicated task linking the different service inputs and outputs to solve a biological problem.


RESULTS
In this work we address the design and implementation of a versatile web client to access BioMOBY compatible services (a system by which a client can interact with multiple sources of biological data regardless of the underlying format or schema) using the service description stored in the BioMOBY catalogue. The automatic interface generator significantly reduces developing time and produces uniform service access mechanisms. The design and proof of concept (for such a client) including the generic interface generator have been developed and implemented in the National Institute for Bioinformatics in Spain.


BACKGROUND
The INB (National Institute for Bioinformatics, Spain) platform is available at www.inab.org/MOWServ
Navas-Delgado
Ismael
I
Integrated Bioinformatics (GNV5) at the University of Málaga, National Institute for Bioinformatics (INB), Málaga, Spain.
Rojano-Muñoz
Maria del Mar
Mdel M
Ramírez
Sergio
S
Pérez
Antonio J
AJ
Andrés León
Eduardo
E
Aldana-Montes
Jose F
JF
Trelles
Oswaldo
O
D001331:Automation; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D030562:Databases, Protein; D019146:Hypermedia; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D007256:Information Systems; D020407:Internet; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D011381:Programming Languages; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface