The Firegoose: two-way integration of diverse data from different bioinformatics web resources with desktop applications

Background: Information resources on the World Wide Web play an indispensable role in modern biology. But integrating data from multiple sources is often encumbered by the need to reformat data files, convert between naming systems, or perform ongoing maintenance of local copies of public databases. Opportunities for new ways of combining and re-using data are arising as a result of the increasing use of web protocols to transmit structured data. Results: The Firegoose, an extension to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, enables data transfer between web sites and desktop tools. As a component of the Gaggle integration framework, Firegoose can also exchange data with Cytoscape, the R statistical package, Multiexperiment Viewer (MeV), and several other popular desktop software tools. Firegoose adds the capability to easily use local data to query KEGG, EMBL STRING, DAVID, and other widely-used bioinformatics web sites. Query results from these web sites can be transferred to desktop tools...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: J. Christopher Bare, Paul T. Shannon, Amy K. Schmid, Nitin S. Baliga
• Keywords: BMCBI 2007, Local Copies, Web Sites, World Wide Web