MONTRA: An agile architecture for data publishing and discovery

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Bioinformatics
• Data Management

Background:

• Data catalogues are essential for organizing information but typically require custom development.
• Integrating heterogeneous data with distinct structures presents a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present MONTRA, a rapid-application development framework for creating web-based data catalogues.
• To facilitate the integration and discovery of heterogeneous objects with distinct data structures.

Main Methods:

• MONTRA utilizes a plugin-based architecture for dynamic service composition.
• A flexible data skeleton underpins MONTRA's functionality, enabling automatic catalogue generation.
• Ensures access control and data privacy in the generated catalogues.

Main Results:

• MONTRA is actively used in several European projects for managing biomedical databases.
• Demonstrates successful application in collecting and managing diverse biomedical data.

Conclusions:

• MONTRA addresses the challenge of scattered biomedical repositories by simplifying data catalogue creation.
• Leverages metadata to expose dataset characteristics, aiding disease understanding and treatment effectiveness research.
• Source code is publicly available for broader adoption and development.