An integrated services approach to biological sequence databases

Database users in molecular biology are faced with steadily increasing amounts of raw data, multiple database providers and services. Here we describe the integration of a set of previously isolated database services and demonstrate their accessibility through a uniform user interface. A multi-layered software architecture is applied to make different degrees of service integration transparent to the user. We focus on the design of specialized gateways that integrate services differing in temporal behavior and stateless or state dependent operation. Gateways may reside on heterogeneous platforms. A link layer is introduced to integrate individual query functions in order to interrelate simple, complex and state dependent services through a common, unique interface. It is possible to generate new complex services by a combination of multiple functions. We describe the application of the World Wide Web (WWW) as the implementation framework of the interface layer. To assure interoperability of services, integrity of data resources must be supervised. Consistency control is issued by a dedicated synchronization layer.