Image via WikipediaDistributed; check.
Function Analysis; check.
Network; check.
That’s always a good start, but there’s more than just words to like about FuncNet. FuncNet is an open platform for prediction and comparison of protein function and, perhaps more significantly, is funded by the EMBRACE network. Why do I think that’s significant? Cause EMBRACE is all about web services.
And web services is why I like the idea of FuncNet, even if it is SOAP and not REST. The idea is not completely new. caBIG falls into a similar category, as does CARMEN. They are working to integrate FuncNet into the EMBRACE web services registry as well.
The reason I like the idea of services like these is that with well defined API‘s you can create virtual pipelines and mashups that allow you to go beyond the core functionality of a service, e.g. you could do some work with FuncNet and throw results into some visualization API.
The project is still in early days, so am very curious to see how it evolves.
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4 Comments
Hi Deepak, thanks for the mention. We'd be very interested in hearing from potential users — bioinformaticians and tool developers — so if anyone's reading who'd like to share any thoughts on how FuncNet could develop, or suggest any useful mashups we could do with other services or data, please do get in touch via the website.
Andrew.
PS… REST services are definitely on the to-do list, shouldn't be too hard as our services toolkit (Apache CXF) does both.
Hi Deepak, thanks for the mention. We'd be very interested in hearing from potential users — bioinformaticians and tool developers — so if anyone's reading who'd like to share any thoughts on how FuncNet could develop, or suggest any useful mashups we could do with other services or data, please do get in touch via the website.
Andrew.
PS… REST services are definitely on the to-do list, shouldn't be too hard as our services toolkit (Apache CXF) does both.