A Web-Services Approach for Integration of Heterogeneous Bioinformatics Databases and Software

Biotechnology researchers increasingly rely their research on the large amount of data stored in multiple heterogeneous bioinformatics databases. Typically, they need to access these databases in a sequential and/or a parallel manner. Thus, an integrated environment and a unified interface are critical for them. This thesis addresses this requirement by introducing a Web-Services based architecture for integrating bioinformatics databases and discusses an implementation that integrates the PDB database, the ProTherm database and the MuSE software. The integrated system has a multiple-tier architecture centered with Web-Services. In addition to use Web-Services as the interface to access databases, the system uses JSP for presentation, Servlet as the controller to provide an extensible and flexible integration management component, and Databases as the backend for data storage. The interface of the integrated system uses multiple frames and provides a unified interface to access integrated system as well as other databases and software.