Supporting remote user defined functions in heterogeneous biological databases

Abstract

Similar to most scientific studies, biological analyses demand a great deal of computations and simulations involving sophisticated tools that are often found geographically distributed over the Internet. A worldwide effort in genomics research has resulted in a powerful collection of publicly available sequence analysis tools. These tools often require specialized local services and domain knowledge to function correctly, rendering them unlikely candidates for integration into remote database applications. Thus, integration of heterogeneous "functions" still remains an open problem. Providing a reasonable framework for seamless integration of these tools with database query engines will enable application developers to exploit and harness the power of these effective analysis tools. In this paper, we present an integration framework for such tools by enabling access to them in a user transparent way as part of database queries. In our system, such online tools are abstracted as remote user defined functions (RUDF). An extended SQL DDL language, called the Internet Function Definition Language (IFDL), is presented for the specification and definition of RUDFs. The interface between database system and the Internet is implemented using a layer based on a language called the Hypertext Query Language (HTQL). The separation of IFDL, DDL, HTQL and SQL DML offers several optimization opportunities and makes it possible to develop an architecture for interoperability of heterogeneous databases with RUDFs in more simple and efficient ways.