[Pipet Devel] Re: standard API for ISYS, OpenBSA & Piper

[Martin Senger]

Hi all,
   I am very happy that a discussion about collaborating and exchanging of
the software component has started. I think that Jeff's idea about having
a mailing list for comparing various approaches is useful. We may use such
mailing list to clarify things and hopefully to find how the components
(whatever they are) can be re-used.
   I am interested especially in finding more about various approaches how
to "pipe" together more applications. The BSA standard (implemented by EBI
under the project called "OpenBSA") is a CORBA-based standard defining how
to run and control _an_ analysis, not the pipe of analysis. The BSA
specification can be used within some framework spec (or API, or whatever)
combining more analysis together. Our ALBeanBox project aims to do it -
but it does the "piping" using Java events, not CORBA, and it is a EBI's
spec not 'blessed' by any standard.
   Regarding XML, we like it (who does not? :-)) - however, in our
projects the role of XML is mostly for metadata, and less for the real
data (which may radically changed for microarry data, but still other
projects, especially OpenBSA and its component projects, will use it
mainly for metadata). This may correspond with your definitions "XML-based
API" - am I right?

   Regards,
   Martin

-- 
Martin Senger

EMBL Outstation - Hinxton                Senger at EBI.ac.uk     
European Bioinformatics Institute        Phone: (+44) 1223 494636      
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus             (Switchboard:     494444)
Hinxton                                  Fax  : (+44) 1223 494468
Cambridge CB10 1SD
United Kingdom                           http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/~senger