SGER: Developing Web Services for the Arabidopsis Community

基因组研究所被授予探索性研究小额赠款(SGER)，用于开发原型程序和工具，以在拟南芥社区的少数数据库上实施网络服务。在过去的几年里，由NSF 2010和美国的其他计划以及欧盟的相应计划资助的拟南芥研究产生了前所未有的大量具有广泛科学意义的数据。充分利用这些数据的潜力需要可访问性和集成性。虽然所有数据都是公开的，但使用的机制主要是由格式和内容差异很大的特定项目网站使用的。这导致了一种非常繁琐的情况，即为了汇编单个拟南芥基因的所有数据，找到所有这些位点并查询其中的每一个。Web服务提供了一种机制，通过该机制可以无缝集成驻留在许多不同位置的数据，为用户提供更丰富的数据集。启动此演示项目是为了在美国大约八个研究站点成功部署Web服务，这些站点托管的数据种类和站点PI的专业水平各不相同。向研究界展示这种数据整合方法的价值可望推动其逐步得到更广泛的采用，以及开发一套更丰富的工具/客户，以进一步加强数据整合。该项目的更广泛影响是将拟南芥数据整合和传播给研究界，其中大部分数据是由2010年项目产生的。数据将可从其发源地直接访问，因此将是最新的。该项目将仔细记录任何个人通过网络服务提供数据所需的硬件和软件要求，并将提供如何设置这一要求的手册。这些努力的结果将在一年一度的国际拟南芥研究会议上报告和展示。

The Institute for Genomic Research is awarded a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) to develop a prototype procedure and tools to implement web services on a small number of databases in the Arabidopsis community. Over the past few years Arabidopsis thaliana research, funded by the NSF 2010 and other programs in the US and corresponding programs in the EU, has generated unprecedented amounts of data of broad scientific interest. Exploiting the full potential of these data requires accessibility and integration. While all data is being made public, the mechanism used is mostly by project-specific web sites that vary widely in format and content. This leads to a situation where it is very tedious to find all these sites and query each of them in order to e.g. compile all data available for a singe Arabidopsis gene. Web services provide a mechanism whereby data residing at many different locations can be seamlessly integrated to provide the user with richer data sets. This demonstration project is initiated to successfully deploy web services at approximately eight research sites in the US that vary both in the kinds of data that they host, and in the level of expertise of the PIs at the sites. Demonstration to the research community of the value of this method of data integration is expected to stimulate its progressively wider adoption as well as the development of a richer suite of tools/clients that will further enhance data integration. The broader impacts of this project are in the integration and dissemination of Arabidopsis data, much of it generated by 2010 projects, to the research community. Data will be directly accessible from the location at which it originates, and thus will be the most current. The project will carefully document the hardware and software requirements needed for any individual to provide his/her data via web services and will provide a "how to" manual to set this up. The results of these efforts will be reported and demonstrated at the annual International Arabidopsis Research Conference.