Two recent research papers presented the Tools and Data Services Registry, developed by ELIXIR Denmark. The first article presents a case of succesful use of the Registry in integrating bioinformatics resources into workbench environments. It describes the Workbench Integration Enabler, a software component to help users find and comprehend available software tools, data resources, and web services, and to localise, execute and combine them. The core element of the workbench environment are the descriptions and metadata of the available resources, coming from the Tools and Data Services Registry. The authors conclude that this new approach can lower the cost to developers of integrating their resources in key workbench environments, and assist bioinformaticians to build, use and update well documented and reproducible workflows.
- Ménager, Hervé et al. (2015) Using registries to integrate bioinformatics tools and services into workbench environments, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 17, p. 1-6. doi: 10.1007/s10009-015-0392-z
The second article (published in Nucleic Acids Research) provides an overview of the Registry, focusing on the community-driven, bottom-up approach used in building and maintaining the Registry. The authors - developers and curators from over 40 organisations - conclude that it can become a community standard for the dissemination of information about bioinformatics resources, and encourage users and developers across all bioinformatics disciplines to integrate the registry content to their own portals, develop applications, and contribute to the emerging common curation effort.
- Ison, Jon et al. (2015) Tools and Data Services Registry: a community effort to document bioinformatics resources, Nucleic Acids Research 3 November, doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv1116
The ELIXIR Tools and Data Registry is a gateway to databases and tools for life science data analysis. It was designed with focus on both discovery and integration of these resources. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date catalogue of resources that are interactive and downloadable, and that offer programmatic access. The registry also allows the community to upload their own resources to the registry following a simple log in procedure. As of September 2015, the registry includes 1,633 resources, with depositions from 91 individual registrations including 40 institutional providers and 51 individuals.