title: Mobyle: a new full web bioinformatics framework.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  For the biologist, running bioinformatics analyses involves a time-consuming management of data and tools. Users need support to organize their work, retrieve parameters and reproduce their analyses. They also need to be able to combine their analytic tools using a safe data flow software mechanism. Finally, given that scientific tools can be difficult to install, it is particularly helpful for biologists to be able to use these tools through a web user interface. However, providing a web interface for a set of tools raises the problem that a single web portal cannot offer all the existing and possible services: it is the user, again, who has to cope with data copy among a number of different services. A framework enabling portal administrators to build a network of cooperating services would therefore clearly be beneficial.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We have designed a system, Mobyle, to provide a flexible and usable Web environment for defining and running bioinformatics analyses. It embeds simple yet powerful data management features that allow the user to reproduce analyses and to combine tools using a hierarchical typing system. Mobyle offers invocation of services distributed over remote Mobyle servers, thus enabling a federated network of curated bioinformatics portals without the user having to learn complex concepts or to install sophisticated software. While being focused on the end user, the Mobyle system also addresses the need, for the bioinfomatician, to automate remote services execution: PlayMOBY is a companion tool that automates the publication of BioMOBY web services, using Mobyle program definitions.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The Mobyle system is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPLv2 on the project web site (http://bioweb2.pasteur.fr/projects/mobyle/). It is already deployed on three servers: http://mobyle.pasteur.fr, http://mobyle.rpbs.univ-paris-diderot.fr and http://lipm-bioinfo.toulouse.inra.fr/Mobyle. The PlayMOBY companion is distributed under the terms of the CeCILL license, and is available at http://lipm-bioinfo.toulouse.inra.fr/biomoby/PlayMOBY/.
authors.affiliation: Groupe Logiciels et Banques de Données, Institut Pasteur, 28, rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex, France. mobyle-support@pasteur.fr
authors.forename: Bertrand
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Néron
authors.forename: Hervé
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ménager
authors.forename: Corinne
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Maufrais
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Joly
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Maupetit
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Letort
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carrere
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tuffery
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Letondal
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020407:Internet; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface
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