Utilizing multiple bioinformatics information sources: an XML database approach

Biological databanks have proven useful to bioscience researchers, especially in the analysis of raw data. Computational tools for sequence identification, structural analysis, and visualization have been built to access these databanks. This paper describes a way to utilize these resources (both data and tools) by integrating different biological databanks into a unified XML framework. An interface to access the embedded bioinformatic tools for this common model is built by leveraging the query language of XML database management system. The proposed framework has been implemented with the emphasis of reusing the existing bioinformatic data and tools. This paper describes the overall architecture of this prototype and some design issues.