Bio::Newsletter - Issue Q3, 2008

Mike's Corner

One of my philosophy professors once said "If you don't have examples, you don't know what you are talking about." In the area of life science research, the same could be said about data. Without data supporting a hypothesis, people would look at any conclusions as dubious, at best. Data drives our research, whether it is gathering it, storing it, interpreting it, backing it up or sharing it, we couldn't go very far without having underlying data.

Data sharing is sometimes an aspect that gets overlooked or doesn't receive its due attention. Sharing data extends beyond creating an archive and sending it to colleagues or opening an FTP port so collaborators can access it. Often times it is important to provide data in a manner that it can easily be consumed by other applications and analyzed further. With todays middle-ware technologies, creating a web services framework can be a very successful way to provide your data to both colleagues and applications, in human and machine readable formats.

There have been attempts at creating standardized data models and sharing them in an open manner. Projects like BioMoby and caBIG have seen some success. But sometimes the most appealing and appropriate solution is implementing your own web services framework. Whether it is using XML-RPC, JSON-RPC, SOAP or REST, these technologies can provide a simple and straight-forward way to allow collaborators to access your public or shared data. And with these technologies, payloads can be in formats that can be used directly as input to other applications or pipelines for anything from display purposes to custom informatics and analysis.

If you are looking for new ways to serve your data and share with the community at large, consider investigating and researching the use of a web service technologies. There are a variety of options for implementation and each has its own set of pros and cons. Any technology that you chose will provide a fast and simple mechanism for users and applications to retrieve and utilize your data. If you are interested in any of these web service technologies but aren't sure where to start or are simply looking for assistance in implementing them, don't hesitate to contact us at Bio::Neos. We are experienced with many different web service technologies and have implemented solutions to enable data sharing and access. Best of luck for the coming months!

Upcoming Project? Contact us today!

With the end of the summer rapidly approaching, many of you are setting your sights on reevaluating your research goals for the upcoming months. If you are thinking about utilizing Bio::Neos' services in your research, now is the time to contact us. Our schedule for the remainder of 2008 is rapidly filling and we are already beginning to schedule projects into 2009. If you have been hesitant to contact us in the past, there is no need delay. There's no obligation and we welcome the opportunity to discuss your research goals and how our services can help. Even if you have a project scheduled to start in the future, we can schedule that now to guarantee completion at the proper time. We always do our best to accommodate your schedule, but remember: the earlier that you contact us, the better!

Be Heard!

Do you utilize web service technologies to share or gather data?

Absolutely! I've retrieved data via web services and I serve up my own data for others to utilize.
Yes, I've used web services to gather data, but I don't serve up my own data that way.
No, not right now but it is something I would like to do eventually.
No, other methods work just fine for me!