caGrid 1.0: an enterprise Grid infrastructure for biomedical research

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Grid Computing
• Software Engineering

Background:

• Diverse and disparate information sources, analysis methods, and applications pose challenges in biomedical research.
• Need for integrated access and management of research data and tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a software infrastructure for discovery, characterization, integrated access, and management of biomedical research resources.
• To establish a core Grid architecture for the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) program.

Main Methods:

• Developed caGrid version 1.0, an enterprise Grid software infrastructure.
• Leveraged Grid computing technologies and Web Services Resource Framework standards.
• Provided core services, toolkits, and APIs for client application development.

Main Results:

• caGrid 1.0 was released in December 2006.
• Built on open-source components with publicly available source code.
• Core software, tools, and documentation are downloadable.

Conclusions:

• caGrid 1.0 addresses key use cases in cancer research, including data discovery, large-scale analysis, and coordinated studies.
• The framework has the potential to benefit the broader biomedical research community.