SPL: an structured pipeline method for frequent remote service interactions in bioinformatics workflows

Scientific (e.g. genetic) data and relative processing tools are usually located at different Web sites; scientists have been strongly expecting a universal solution to compare, integrate, and analyze these heterogeneous and usually large size data with processing tools from distant sites for years. This paper presents a pipelined Web services workflow framework: SPL (service pipeline logic) that can reduce frequent data interaction between sites and mitigate network traffic incurred by huge scientific data transmission during the course of processing a bioinformatics workflow. The paper shows that the processing time of a complex bioinformatics workflow can be saved remarkably with the application of SPL.