= 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 or [http://www.nexml.org nexml]. 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?

|| Category || Perl/BioPerl || Java/BioJava || Ruby/BioRuby || Python/BioPython ||
|| BioMOBY || o || o || x || x ||
|| WSRF        || o || o || x || x ||
|| EBI SOAP || ? || ? || o || ? ||
|| NCBI SOAP || ? || ? || x || ? ||
|| KEGG API || ? || ? || o || ? ||
|| DDBJ XML || ? || ? || o || ? ||
|| PDBj || ? || ? || x || ? ||
|| BioSQL || o || ? || o || ? ||