Open Bio* Workgroup

I would like to get an overview about current support and implementations of web services in every Open Bio* libraries (BioPerl, BioPython, BioRuby and BioJava) and hope to discuss the following:

• What can be done with the Open Bio* projects to support interoperability?
  • Is it worth trying to mapping BioMOBY data objects (BioMOBY triplets) to Bio* library specific data strucuture?
  • Why not use complexType in SOAP to automate object creation?
  • Could a webservice be defined to allow Bio* interoperability? This would require a common exchange format. Possibly one of the XML formats used by NCBI or EBI. Could a webservice backed with BioSQL provide and persistent objects in this format?

• What part should be done on the web service provider's side and what is the part left best to be addressed in Open Bio* libraries?
  • Format exchange, job management, sequence manipulation ...

• What fraction of the bioinfomatics field is covered by current Open Bio* library and what subset of those is covered by web services?