Web Services 4 Life Sciences: A Curated Catalogue of Life Science Web Services

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

WS4LS is an initiative aimed at providing easy access to a catalogue of Web Services relevant to the life science communities. Web Services are defined by the W3C as a software system designed to enable machine to machine interoperability over a network. However, the discovery of Web Services is today quite a difficult task for bench scientists whom do not have the time or means to endeavor in the informatics related to these. Web Services are poorly described. WS4LS intends to provide easy, human accessible content documenting Web Services by extensive use of service ontologies through which it will be trivial to discover a function or operation, as required by the end user. Until recently, laboratories had to invest locally in the implementation and maintenance of bioinformatic tools and databases to carry out both day to day as well as complex tasks. WS4LS addresses the 'where and how' of Web Services for scientists and exposes how to build these into local analytical pipelines. WS4LS will also provide the means for creating communities that will share knowledge and enhance scientific interactions at various levels. WS4LS e-scientists communities will complement existing efforts and generate a Google-like Coop [http://www.google.com/coop/].