Lushbough, Carol - BRIN V2
- Assistant Professor, Computer Science
- University of South Dakota
- M.S., Computer Science, University of South Dakota
- M.S., Mathematics, University of South Dakota
Many emerging computational opportunities in bioinformatics require access to multiple repositories, community databases and project databases for use in domain-specific research, typically conducted upon subsets of all relevant data. Because each data source is accessed with a distinct query language and returns results in unique formats, researchers must either rely on a small number of primary data sources or exert large efforts to learn multiple specifications.
The bioextract server is a federated database service designed to consolidate and serve data extracts from accessible, heterogeneous, biomolecular databases. It offers a central distribution point for uniformly formatted data from various data sources. The basic operations of the bioextract server allows researchers via a Web browsers to: specify data sources; select clean-ing and analytic tools; flexibly query the sources with a full range of relational operators; determine download formats for their resulting extracts; save workflow, name and keep query results persistent for re-use. Data sources may be classified as public or belonging to specific research groups. This provides collaborative groups with the ability to share distributed data without having to make that data public.