| Biomolecular interaction data is an increasingly important bioinformatics dataset used to examine biological systems. However, such data is spread across multiple databases and expressed in disparate data structures and formats. A prerequisite for working with this data would be consolidation into a single non-redundant updated repository. An initial design and prototype for consolidating and visualizing interaction data will be presented with a special emphasis on providing scaleable and reliable Web services as part of the solution. The central point of operation is a data warehouse with numerous parsers retrieving updated information from existing data sources. A local application interface provides access to this data warehouse for local programmers, Java servlets and Web services. The usage of various operating systems and programming languages by the intended clients was considered when designing the system. Therefore, platform independent protocols were used. Moreover, multiple implementations of service hosting were considered with respect to their ability to handle large data sets reliably in a stateful manner. Using these web services, a tool was developed to retrieve and present interaction data visually. The approach taken was to construct modules as plugins to existing molecular visualization software. |