Developing sustainable software solutions for bioinformatics by the " Butterfly" paradigm.

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Software Engineering
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Academic bioinformatics software development faces challenges including short-term funding, fragmented solutions, and inadequate documentation.
• Emerging issues include managing big data, complex datasets, software compatibility, and rapidly changing data representations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an iterative development approach, the "Butterfly" paradigm, for sustainable bioinformatics software engineering.
• To emphasize user feedback, sustainable planning, and interoperability in scientific software development.
• To ensure intuitive tool usage through a middleware supporting graphical user interfaces and independent database/tool development.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of the iterative "Butterfly" paradigm for key scientific software engineering steps.
• Integration of user feedback loops throughout the development lifecycle.
• Development of a middleware to support both a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) and independent database/tool development.

Main Results:

• Validation of the proposed approach through internal software development.
• Comparison of different software design paradigms across various software solutions.
• Demonstrated potential for creating more sustainable and interoperable bioinformatics tools.

Conclusions:

• The "Butterfly" paradigm offers a viable strategy for addressing sustainability challenges in bioinformatics software development.
• Integrating user feedback and employing a middleware approach enhances usability and maintainability.
• This methodology contributes to more robust and adaptable scientific software solutions for complex biological data.