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Web Service for Bioinformatic Analysis Workflow
An application that automates Bioinformatic Analysis Workflow by deploying a Web service.
Date Posted: March 23, 2004
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What is Web Service for Bioinformatic Analysis Workflow (WsBAW)?
WsBAW is an application that automates Bioinformatic Analysis Workflow by deploying a Web service. It consists of a JavaTM client application through which users are able to send batch requests to a specific bioinformatic workflow execution engine, such as BioWBI, by using a Web service.
Without this Web service to handle Bioinformatic Analysis workflow, a researcher typically has to manually handle operations repetitively on the same input data or otherwise proceed through multiple sequences of different analytical steps using multiple analysis algorithms. Using WsBAW, researchers can handle the complete research analysis in a batch mode by writing and organizing workflows that include all the operations that otherwise would need to be done by hand.
Workflows then are simply sent to a workflow execution engine: Bioinformatic Workflow Builder Interface (BioWBI), available here at alphaWorks. This complementary technology (BioWBI) is an easy-to-use, Web-based working environment from which a life sciences researcher can graphically build and execute bioinformatic workflows and share analysis processes.
How does it work? WsBAW currently supports four operators: the Pipe operator, the Recursive operator, the Iterator operator, and the Conditional operator:
- Iteration (I): runs the same algorithm more times on different input data, using the same parameter values.
- Recursion (R): runs the same algorithm more times on the same input data, changing the value assumed by a selected parameter within a group of values defined by the user.
- Pipe (P): uses the output data of the previous algorithm as input data for the following algorithm.
- Condition (C): depending on the value of a check parameter, runs the first or the second of the following instructional blocks.
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|  | About the technology author(s): WsBAW was created by the Italian IBM BCS-AIS Life Sciences Practice team. This is a specialized consulting team whose main focus is data and information integration and mining for life sciences areas such as pharma and research discovery (bioinformatic portal and integrated platforms) and clinical genomics (information-based medicine). The team creates and supports leading-edge life science applications as well as consulting projects for extending, transforming, and accelerating the adoption of advanced e-workplace technology for life sciences researchers. The IBM BCS-AIS Life Sciences Practice team is part of Java Technology Center at IBM Semea Sud, located in Bari (Italy).
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