title: ProServer: a simple, extensible Perl DAS server.
abstract: CONCLUSIONS
  The increasing size and complexity of biological databases has led to a growing trend to federate rather than duplicate them. In order to share data between federated databases, protocols for the exchange mechanism must be developed. One such data exchange protocol that is widely used is the Distributed Annotation System (DAS). For example, DAS has enabled small experimental groups to integrate their data into the Ensembl genome browser. We have developed ProServer, a simple, lightweight, Perl-based DAS server that does not depend on a separate HTTP server. The ProServer package is easily extensible, allowing data to be served from almost any underlying data model. Recent additions to the DAS protocol have enabled both structure and alignment (sequence and structural) data to be exchanged. ProServer allows both of these data types to be served.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  ProServer can be downloaded from http://www.sanger.ac.uk/proserver/ or CPAN http://search.cpan.org/~rpettett/. Details on the system requirements and installation of ProServer can be found at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/proserver/.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Geome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Finn
authors.forename: James W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Stalker
authors.forename: David K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Jackson
authors.forename: Eugene
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kulesha
authors.forename: Jody
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Clements
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pettett
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D011381:Programming Languages; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D012984:Software; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship