FIGURE 1. Moving towards a bioinformatics nation.
From the following article:
Creating a bioinformatics nation
Lincoln Stein
Nature 417, 119-120(9 May 2002)
doi:10.1038/417119a
Because each data provider (such as Flybase and UCSC) publishes data in an idiosyncratic form, the Bio* software package (Bio* libraries) was created to massage data into a standard internal format. Unfortunately, Bio* needs to be fixed each time a provider changes its formats. A web-services world would build on the successes of the Bio* projects by defining standard interfaces to various types of computations and data formats. The Bio* libraries can be written to recognize these interfaces, allowing them to interoperate easily with all data providers. A service registry would let data providers enter an electronic 'address book', allowing the Bio*libraries to locate and interact with new data sources automatically.
