bioimage database project director image bioinformatics laboratory, oxford e-science centre...
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BioImage Database Project DirectorImage Bioinformatics Laboratory, Oxford e-Science Centre
Department of Zoology, University of OxfordOxford OX1 3PS, UK
e-mail: david.shotton @zoo.ox.ac.uk
David Shotton
IDF Members’ Meeting
22/06/04
© David Shotton 2004
The BioImage Database and identifiers
The nature of bioinformatics databases
Provide Open Access, free to academics, for data generated by publicly funded research
Few databases have assured long-term funding; many run on a shoestring
None are run for the purpose of generating profit, although some generate income to offset costs by selling services to commercial companies
Data are rarely replicated between databases (with the exception of basic sequence and crystal structure data), so little need for multiple resolution
Many add value to raw data by providing expert annotations, organizing data according to protein families, etc.
Databases typically use distinct data models and lack interoperability
Some are actively adopting new Semantic Web technologies
All are ripe for the use of universal resolvable identifiers
The aims of the BioImage Database Project
The aims of the BioImage Database (www.bioimage.org), funded by the European COmmission ORIEL project (www.oriel.org) are:
To be a searchable database of high-quality multidimensional research images of biological specimens, both ‘raw’ and processes, with detailed supporting metadata concerning:
the biological specimen itself the experimental procedure details of image formation and subsequent digital processing the people, institutions and funding agencies involved the curation and provenance of the image and its metadata
To integrate such multi-dimensional digital image data with other life science resources by providing links to literature and ‘factual’ databases
To store, use and conform with standard external identifiers such as DOIs where these are available, particularly when referencing articles
The basic BioImage metadata model (with thanks to <indecs>)
Cell or organism
Experiment or study
Image capture
Image sets of multidimensional images, including videos
Subject or specimen
Researcher
Photographer or microscopist Camera or
microscope
Experimental conditions or manipulations
TheBioImage
home page
www.bioimage.org
Note the hierarchical
browse categories and the alternative Browse / Search
arrangement
Search result,
showing Studies
What are Life Science Identifiers?
LSIDs have been developed by IBM and I3C (the Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium; www.i3c.org) to serve the life sciences
They uniquely identify single digital objects
They provide persistent URNs resolvable though normal DNS mechanisms
They are location independent
They permit provenance records (versioning)
While developed for the life sciences, they are in fact completely generic
What do LSIDs look like?
A five-part format: urn:lsid:Authority:Namespace:Object_ID[:Revision-ID] urn:lsid: This network identifier (NID) is a mandatory prefix Authority is the root DNS name of the issuing authority Namespace is chosen by the issuing authority and constrains the scope of
the object Object_ID is an alphanumeric object ID unique to the namespace Revision is an optional version of the object
For example:
urn:lsid:bioimage.org:BIOIMAGE:76
refers to entry 76 in the BioImage Database
urn:lsid:ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:pubmed:12571434
references a PubMed article
urn:lsid:ncbi.nlm.nig.gov:GenBank:T48601:2
refers to the second version of an entry in GenBank
How do they work?
LSIDs are in a sense just a sociological con trick, since they are nothing more than cheap and cheerful URNs
They can be published and resolved, either over the Web using DNS mechanisms, or using Web Services protocols (UDDI, WSDL, SOAP)
If an LSID names an abstract concept, such as a protein name, for which multiple relevant datasets may exist, that LSID will not have any byte data associated with it, but instead will have metadata pointing to other LSIDs that themselves name ‘concrete’ versions of the object, e.g. the protein sequence, the crystal structure. Those LSIDs do name actual byte data
They share many of the weaknesses of conventional Web mechanisms, particularly regarding security and access control
Who are using LSIDs?
LSIDs wer first introduced in 2003
LSIDs are being adopted by highly respected and influential leaders in the bioinformatics Web Services and Semantic Web community, including
Mark Wilkinson of BioMOBY (www.biomoby.org),
Carol Goble of MyGrid (www.mygrid.org.uk), and
and Eric Neumann, Global Head of Knowledge Management for Aventis
They form the resolution mechanism behind Haystack, the first Semantic Web browser, based on Eclipse (haystack.lcs.mit.edu)
Why are people choosing LSIDs
LSIDs can be retro-fitted to existing databases, permitting you to convert your own internal identifiers into unique resolvable identifiers, without altering your existing naming system
Open Source software exists to permit you to establish DNS and Web Services resolution services for your URNs, such that anyone addressing your URL can send an LSID and have returned an RDF document describing what that LSID represents
Like being a Web publisher, anyone can become an LSID registration agency
No central third-party registration agency is required, and there are no fees to pay
This no-cost decentralized mechanism, while lacking many of the safeguards and refinements of DOIs, has the same ingredients for success as Tim Berners-Lee’s original Web protocols
We have adopted LSIDs for the BioImage Database and will establish our own LSID resolution authority as soon as we go public
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