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Moby and Moby 2: creatures of the deep (web)
Ben P Vandervalk1, E Luke McCarthy, Mark D Wilkinson
1Department of Medical Genetics, The Providence Heart + Lung Research Institute at St Paul's Hospital, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6Z 1Y6, Canada.
Briefings in Bioinformatics
|January 20, 2009
Summary
Bioinformatics data integration faces challenges with Semantic Web standards. The CardioSHARE/Moby-2 project aims to improve accessibility of
Area of Science:
- Bioinformatics
- Semantic Web Technologies
- Data Integration
Background:
- Integrating data from disparate bioinformatics resources remains a significant challenge.
- While Semantic Web standards like RDF and OWL offer potential, their adoption and interconnectivity are limited.
- Centralized semantic warehouses integrate external data but restrict queries to included resources.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the adoption of Semantic Web standards in health and life sciences bioinformatics.
- To explore community-driven semantic warehousing projects and their connectivity.
- To present progress on the CardioSHARE/Moby-2 project for accessing 'Deep Web' data.
Main Methods:
- Review of Semantic Web standards adoption in key bioinformatics resources.
- Analysis of existing semantic warehousing projects.
- Development of the CardioSHARE/Moby-2 system for Deep Web data accessibility.
Main Results:
- Slow overall adoption of Semantic Web standards in bioinformatics.
- Limited interconnectivity between existing semantic resources.
- Progress in making Deep Web bioinformatics data accessible via SPARQL queries.
Conclusions:
- Addressing the 'Deep Web' data challenge is crucial for bioinformatics data integration.
- The CardioSHARE/Moby-2 project demonstrates a viable approach to enhance data accessibility.
- Further development is needed to overcome limitations in current Semantic Web implementations for bioinformatics.
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