OntologyWidget - a reusable, embeddable widget for easily locating ontology terms

Background: Biomedical ontologies are being widely used to annotate biological data in a computer-accessible, consistent and well-defined manner. However, due to their size and complexity, annotating data with appropriate terms from an ontology is often challenging for experts and non-experts alike, because there exist few tools that allow one to quickly find relevant ontology terms to easily populate a web form. Results: We have produced a tool, OntologyWidget, which allows users to rapidly search for and browse ontology terms. OntologyWidget can easily be embedded in other web-based applications. OntologyWidget is written using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and has two related elements. The first is a dynamic auto-complete ontology search feature. As a user enters characters into the search box, the appropriate ontology is queried remotely for terms that match the typedin text, and the query results populate a drop-down list with all potential matches. Upon selection of a t...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Catherine Beauheim, Farrell Wymore, Michael Nitzberg, Zachariah K. Zachariah, Heng Jin, J. H. Pate Skene, Catherine A. Ball, Gavin Sherlock
• Keywords: BMCBI 2007, Dynamic Auto-complete Ontology, Ontology, Ontology Browser