A Web-based collaborative system and its application

As distributed research projects such as genomic research become more popular in most nations, the need for information systems providing effective collaboration facilities to the related group members has grown rapidly. Since the purpose of collaborative systems are helping people work together with more convenient manners, it is desirable that these systems present virtual workspaces for sharing experimental data and result files among the associated members. In this paper, we describe an application of a Web-based collaborative system, named BioPlace. BioPlace provides various ways of collaboration methods among genomic researchers. BioPlace contains two data storage places, named personal workspace and team workspace, which are the main components of the system and schedule management scheme among the related group members. In addition to, it also includes genomic research road map and a set of sequence search program to enhance efficiency of research activities. Since the BioPlace system is developed with enterprise JavaBeans technology, it could provide highly scalable and reliable services.