Version 71 (modified by ktym, 17 years ago)

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BioHackathon 2008

Towards integrated web service in life science with Open Bio* libraries.

Summary

The number of web service providers in bioinformatics field is increasing year by year. In theory, these services are interoperable and independent from computer languages. However, each service uses their own definition of the data types and naming conventions for the methods. Moreover, these services are often not usable by specific languages (partly, due to the lack of compliance of the SOAP/WSDL specification in the language's library).

This situation prevents these services to be popularized for and used in combination by end users as a infrastructure of the daily research. The  BioMOBY project has been tried to overcome the circumstances by defining ontologies for data types and methods used in the services. However, there are many major service providers which are not yet participated in the BioMOBY framework. Especially, there are several web service providers in Japan such as  DDBJ,  KEGG,  PDBj and  CBRC but none of them are not integrated in any context.

Thus, at  DBCLS, we started to develop a new proxy server which translates user's request for the appropriate web service provider. If all  Open Bio* libraries support BioMOBY and other service providers, interoperability of these services can be significantly improved. Here, we need agreement for the future direction of web services by every web service providers and client developers.

We believe gathering all web service providers to discuss about the standardization of objects and methods among web services, and Open Bio* library developers from different programming languages ( BioPerl,  BioPython,  BioRuby, and  BioJava) to discuss about the implementation of the common infrastructure, must benefit usability and interoperability for the life science in the next era.

For this purpose, we hope to organize a BioHackathon specialized for the web services from four different domains.

  • Web service providers
    • Encourage independent service providers to join the movement of integration and interoperability
      • Increasing the number of SOAP compliant services (tools/databases)
  • Open Bio* developers
    • Utilizing every bioinformatics web services by 4 major computer languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, Java)
      • Creating compatible classes for sequences, expressions, pathways etc. among Open Bio* libraries
  • Workflow client developers
    • Providing various clients to create and execute bioinformatics workflows
      • Connecting seamlessly: Web service - Grid, Remote - Local, SOAP/WSDL - REST, Sync - Async
  • BioMOBY project developers
    • Standardizing the objects and methods in bioinformatics web services via BioMOBY
      • Discussing about the best solution of the framework and the ontologies for life science

Topics

List of tentative meeting topics for the web service providers, the Open Bio* developers, the workflow client developers, and the BioMOBY project:

Participants

Schedule

  • 2008-2-10 (Sun) - Arrival ( Narita airport, Japan)
  • 2008-2-11 (Mon) - Presentations & discussions (Roppongi Academy Hills)
  • 2008-2-12 (Tue) - Hack, hack, hack (CBRC)
  • 2008-2-13 (Wed) - Hack, hack, hack (CBRC)
  • 2008-2-14 (Thr) - Hack, hack, hack (CBRC)
  • 2008-2-15 (Fri) - Hack, hack, hack (CBRC)
  • 2008-2-16 (Sat) - Departure

Venue

DBCLS and CBRC will provide ideal environment for discussions and developments.

  •  Roppongi Academy Hills (Roppongi, Central Tokyo)
    • Access from the hotel: Shiodome to Roppongi station - Ooedo subway line (JPY 210, 12min)
  •  CBRC Computational Biology Research Cener (Odaiba, Tokyo Bay Area)
    • Access from the hotel: Shiodome to Telecom center station - Yurikamome line (JPY 370, 17min)
    • One day pass (JPY 800) is recommend, so that you can go out for lunch to the restaurants at the stations nearby

Check out the KML file for Google Earth.

Housing

  •  Hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome
    • Free broadband Internet connection
    • Free coffee and bread for breakfast
    • You can find convenience stores and the Starbacks coffee nearby
    • Good access to the Ginza shopping street and the Tsukiji market (famous for Sushi restaurants)

Access

How to get from  Tokyo Narita International Airport?

  • By bus (JPY 3,000, 90min - easiest, recommended if you bring a heavy suitcase)
    •  Airport Limousine is available to Conrad Tokyo hotel (next to our hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome)
  • By train
    • By JR line (JPY 3,110, 75min - fastest)
      • Narita to Tokyo station - Narita express
      • Tokyo to Shimbashi station - Yamanote line
    • By Keisei and JR line (JPY 910, 90min - economical)
      • Keisei Narita to Nippori station - Keisei express
      • Nippori to Shimbashi JR station - JR Yamanote or Keihin Tohoku line
    • By Keisei and Asakusa subway line (JPY 960, 90min - economical)
      • Keisei Narita to Keisei Takasago or Aoto station - Keisei express
      • Keisei Takasago or Aoto to Shimbashi subway station - Asakusa line

From Shimbashi (JR or subway) station, you can take Yurikamome line for 1 station (JPY 180) to Shiodome station (in front of our hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome) or walk (5min).

  • 1 USD (US dollar) is about 110-115 JPY (Japanese yen)

Misc

What you should bring with you?

  • Laptop computer
  • Conversion plug for your AC adaptor (identical to US type)
  • LAN cable
  • Warm coat (T-shirt is not recommended for February in Japan)
  • Bottle of local liquor to share :)

Initial documents (outdated)

Starting Points

For a complete list of local wiki pages, see TitleIndex.

Attachments