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The common exchange format for basic bioinformatics dataSuitable for Web services and programmatic libraries |
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BioXSD version 1.1
A new minor release of BioXSD 1.1, the version BioXSD 1.1.1, was released on Friday the 13th of January, 2012.
As all minor releases of BioXSD are compatible with all previous minor releases within the last major release, BioXSD 1.1.1 is backwards compatible with BioXSD 1.1 data (i.e. less restricted).
The 50 BioXSD-compatible Web services project
Volunteers are welcome to join the 50 (and more) BioXSD-compatible Web services project!
The aim is to provide compatible Web services and other tools that adopt BioXSD as one of their input/output formats, during the years 2011 and 2012.
For more details, please contact support@bioxsd.org.
BioXSD defines exchange formats of basic bioinformatics types of data. BioXSD aims to serve as the canonical data model for bioinformatics Web services.
Canonical data format does not mean "the only format", but an exchange format that can be common to several tools (as one of multiple formats the tools are supporting). Tools can produce and consume BioXSD directly, or BioXSD can be used as an intermediate canonical format rich enough to enable conversions among diverse formats. Using common exchange format enables smooth intergration of compatible tools into analysis workflows.
BioXSD is a rich but not too complicated XML-Schema-based format of sequences, sequence annotations, alignments, and references to resources.
Specialised standard XML formats such as for example SBML, MAGE-ML, GCDML, PDBML, MIF, PhyloXML should be used always when applicable. BioXSD aims at filling the gap between these specialised XML formats.
BioXSD enables deployment of globally and smoothly interoperable bioinformatics tools on the World Wide Web of Services.
BioXSD supports WS-I compliant Web services and interoperates with ordinary SOAP and XML libraries for common programming languages. No other infrastructure than WWW, SOAP, and XML is necessary.
BioXSD is an initiative coming from the scientific community: from the EMBRACE project partners.
The EMBRACE standards:
BioXSD data-type definitions are annotated by the EDAM (EMBRACE Data And Methods) ontology. BioXSD thus offers ready-made building blocks for Web-service interfaces with a globally defined, controlled meaning.
BioXSD has been developed by analysing existing requirements, tools, Web services, data formats, and ontologies.
Feasibility was tested at different pilot providers, using diverse libraries and programming languages.
BioXSD types can be used directly if applicable; or can be included in other standard or custom types, extended or restricted. With services that use other or proprietary formats, BioXSD can be used as the canonical intermediate exchange format.
Open collaboration within the community: BioXSD welcomes feature requests and new collaborations!
To submit your requirements, please write to developers@bioxsd.org. Submission tracking system will be available in the future.
Publication:
Kalaš M., Puntervoll P., Joseph A., Bartaševičiūtė E., Töpfer A., Venkataraman P., Pettifer S., Bryne J.C., Ison J., Blanchet C., Rapacki K., Jonassen I. (2010) BioXSD: the common data-exchange format for everyday bioinformatics web services. Bioinformatics, 26, i540-i546.
BioXSD 1.1 is available at http://bioxsd.org/BioXSD-1.1.xsd. This stable version is available for implementations and open for additions and further requirements. Suggestions for changes are welcome and may be reflected in the future versions. This is the canonical Schema location to be imported in document XSDs (such as in Web services' WSDLs) or to be synchronised with.
(There is no 'worked-around' version available yet for Web-service providers using Python for SOAP stack. It will be available soon. Please contact support@bioxsd.org with urgent inquiries.)
BioXSD 1.0 is available at http://bioxsd.org/BioXSD-1.0.xsd. This is the canonical Schema location to be imported in document XSDs (such as in Web services' WSDLs) or to be synchronised with.
(For Web-service providers using Python for SOAP stack: Due to some important basic features missing in the Python Zolera Soap Infrastructure (ZSI) library, a special version for generating ZSI code is at http://bioxsd.org/BioXSD-1.0.zsi.Workaround.xsd. Do not forget to get the ZSI patch for the empty-complexType bug. This xsd is "SOAP-compatible" with the normal xsd. It means that the services in Python should be generated from WSDLs importing the BioXSD-x.x.zsi.Workaround.xsd Schema, but WSDLs of the deployed services should then be importing the normal BioXSD-x.x.xsd Schema.)
BioXSD Schemas are available under the Creative Commons BY-ND 3.0 license with additionally allowed inclusion, extensions and restrictions in user's XML namespace. Contributions to new canonical versions, in the bioxsd.org XML namespace, are welcome under supervision of the BioXSD consortium (in order to keep BioXSD a common, canonical data model).
For release information including changelog please refer to the bottom of the .xsd files
Technical documentation of the BioXSD version 1.1 is at /technicalDocumentation/BioXSD-1.1
Documentation of BioXSD version 1.0 is available at /technicalDocumentation/BioXSD-1.0
Thanks to the providers of bioinformatics Web services who started adopting BioXSD as pilot users, the number of services compatible with BioXSD rises. Currently, adapted Web services are:
If you started using BioXSD for your services, libraries, or other tools, please let us know by sending an email to support@bioxsd.org. For maintenance and support purposes we need to know about the providers using BioXSD. A registration system will be available in the future.
Example workflows (analysis pipelines) combine multiple bioinformatics Web services using BioXSD.
Workflows show that these services are smoothly compatible.
Examples of sequence-feature data represented in BioXSD 1.1 format.
Examples of diverse types of bioinformatics data represented in BioXSD 1.0 format are available here. This example file contains examples of sequence records, annotated sequences, and multiple-sequence alignments.
Volunteers are welcome! (developers@bioxsd.org)
Volunteers are especially welcome to join the 50 (and more) BioXSD-compatible Web services project!
BioXSD has been and is further being developed as a part of multiple collaborative projects. There has never been any funding directed to BioXSD.
CBU, BCCS, Bergen, Norway:
Matúš Kalaš, Inge Jonassen, Pål Puntervoll, Jan Christian Bryne (now Oslo University Hospital), Armin Töpfer (also CeBiTec, Bielefeld, Germany)
CBS, DTU, Greater Copenhagen, Denmark:
Edita Bartaševičiūtė, Kristoffer Rapacki
IBCP, CNRS, Lyon, France:
Christophe Blanchet, Alexandre Joseph (until 2010)
EBI, EMBL, Hinxton, U.K.:
Jon Ison
Funding:
European Commission FP6 (to the EMBRACE project)
Research Council of Norway (to the eSysbio project)
Villum Foundation (to the Center for Disease Systems Biology)
l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche (to the HIPCAL project)
Contact: support@bioxsd.org
Last update: 2012-01-13