[Bioperl-l] BIO2001 & I3C - comments?

[Alan Robinson]

I've just returned from the BIO-2001 meeting, where I had been invited to
participate in the panel discussion on I3C (where I waved the Open Source
and OMG flag :)

I3C's current standardisation route is via XML for data exchange. There's
been discussion of expanding this to include other web services, c.f.
ebXML, SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, etc.

A major topic of discussion at BIO was the relationship of I3C to existing
eforts such as the bio* projects and OMG, and how formal an organisation
it should be (i.e. instigation of membership dues and by-laws).

I3C is currently vendor led, but they want academic involvement. I do
believe they want to play nice and are evaluating what other initiatives
are doing and have done.

Compared to the bio* projects, I understand they currently want XML DTD's
for data exchange between vendor software, not software implementations.

Their relationship with the OMG is more unclear - However, personally I
don't consider that it's optimal to define standards in XML (standards are
defined in terms of API's and protocols; an XML DTD is just one
implementation of a data structure, but with some serious limitations -
YMMV).

Personnally, I'd favour the I3C as a collection of working groups that
work on standardisation for biological web services, but based on object
models that may be submitted to the OMG later. Bio* could help develop,
test and build open source implementations of these.


Alan

PS Re the press releases: I suspect that with so many companies involved
(some of which are probably going for IPOs), that some PR departments have
got a bit over-excited.


--
============================================================
Alan J. Robinson, D.Phil.             Tel:+44-(0)1223 494444
European Bioinformatics Institute     Fax:+44-(0)1223 494468
EMBL Outstation - Hinxton             Email:  alan@ebi.ac.uk
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
Hinxton, Cambridge
CB10 1SD, UK                http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/~alan/
============================================================

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, chris dagdigian wrote:

> 
> Believe it or not, we (open-bio) are currently hosting the I3C website. 
> The URL is http://i3c.open-bio.org
> 
> Eventually they will probably be moving to www.i3c.org
> 
> As far as I can tell (you need to ignore the hype that made it into the 
> press releases and the wire articles) the current state of the I3C 
> implementation is that (a) it works (b) it is only currently suitable as 
> a tradeshow demo.
> 
> That being said I don't want to knock them because they have gotten much 
> accomplished in a short time. The demo they created for BIO (my company 
> Blackstone was involved) was basically a proof of concept showing that 
> all these various companies and groups could tie products together and 
> swap data.
> 
> -Chris
> 
> 
> 
> Mark Wilkinson wrote:
> 
> > This is only tangentally related to BioPerl, but I'll throw the question
> > out there anyway as I can't think of a better forum for this discussion:
> > 
> > Was anyone on the list at the BIO2001 meeting to hear the presentation
> > from the I3C about a data exchange format for biological information?  I
> > was not able to attend, but I'm quite interested in what they have
> > accomplished, and how.  This is very much the theme of the Saskatoon
> > "fishing trip" that I have been discussing privately with some of you.
> > I think this would be a very important matter to discuss at that
> > meeting, but I haven't yet be able to find much "hard" information on
> > exactly what the I3C is proposing.... all I know is that it is XML
> > based...
> > 
> > Can anyone out there enlighten me with a URL?  Does anyone have an
> > opinion (educated or otherwise ;-) ) on their proposals?
> > 
> > Cheers!
> > 
> > Mark
> > 
> > --
> > --------------------------------
> > "Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
> > ________________________________
> > 
> > Dr. Mark Wilkinson
> > Bioinformatics Group
> > National Research Council of Canada
> > Plant Biotechnology Institute
> > 110 Gymnasium Place
> > Saskatoon, SK
> > Canada
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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