Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 3, numbers 3 and 4, 2010 // View article

Bioinformatics: From Disparate Web Services to Semantics and Interoperability

Authors:
Mikael Åsberg
Lena Strömbäck

Keywords: bioinformatics; XML; web services; interoperability; semantics

Abstract:
In the field of bioinformatics, there exists a large number of web service providers and many competing standards regarding how data should be represented and interfaced. However, these web services are often hard to use for a non-programmer and it can be especially hard to understand how different services can be used together to create scientific workflows. In this paper we have performed a literature study to identify problems involved in developing interoperable web services for the bioinformatics community and steps taken by other projects to address them. We have also conducted a case study by developing our own bioinformatic web service to further investigate these problems. Based on our case study we have identified a number of design issues important to consider when designing web services. The paper is concluded by discussing current approaches aimed at making web services easier to use and by presenting our own proposal of an easy-to-use solution for integrating information from web services.

Pages: 396 to 406

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2010. Used with permission.

Publication date: April 6, 2011

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628