Generalised framework for pathosystems and bioinformatics webservices

This paper describes a generalized web-based framework for VBI pathosystems informatics & bioinformatics web services. The framework provides a universal mechanism for accessing web services through web browsers. A web service can be configured to the framework easily. The framework is designed using object-oriented methodology and implemented using Java 2 Enterprise Edition, relational databases, XML technology and various other open source technologies. It is designed to conform to a n-tiered architecture that includes several layers: a web-based graphical user interface built using Apache Struts web framework running on Apache Jakarta Tomcat; a business object layer, server and web service components that process the queries and manipulate the result sets; and a robust data access layer. The system provides an extensible, flexible, and user-friendly framework for any generic bioinformatics projects, including genome curation, micro-array gene expression profiles, pathogen information curation and pathway analysis, etc.