Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1.6 IMGT-Choreography
The goal of IMGT-Choreography is to orchestrate dynamic procedure calls between
IMGT
®
databases querying and analysis tools, using IMGT's biological approaches
(Lefranc et al. 2004a). Major existing or potential “conversation nodes” can be iden-
tified between IMGT
®
tools, by an analysis of their profiles (IMGT tool diamonds;
Lefranc et al. 2004a). IMGT-Choreography is based on the Web service architecture
paradigm (see W3C; http://www.w3.org/).
Conversations between Web services are
expressed using the sole IMGT-ML language both for queries and for result fetches.
1.6.1 IMGT Tool Diamonds
In order to enhance the interoperability between the IMGT
®
components, IMGT
®
tools were analysed for input and output parameters, performed tasks, and accompa-
nying databases (IMGT reference directories). Graphical diamond-shaped represen-
tations, designated as “IMGT tool diamonds”
(Lefranc et al. 2004a), were developed
to obtain tool profiles and to compare the state of the art of each tool in relation to
the IMGT ontological concepts. Each IMGT tool diamond is composed of modules
that correspond to different IMGT-ONTOLOGY concepts and each module com-
prises four facets: input parameters, task, IMGT reference directory, and output
parameters
(Lefranc et al. 2004a).
1.6.2 IMGT-ML
IMGT-ML (Chaume et al. 2001; Chaume et al. 2003) (available at IMGT In-
dex>IMGT-ML, http://imgt.cines.fr) represents the specification of the main IMGT-
ONTOLOGY concepts (Giudicelli and Lefranc 1999), formalized through a markup
language defined in-house, based on Extensible Markup Language (XML)
(http://www.w3.org/XML/) and constrained through XML Schema (http://
www.w3.org/XML/Schema). Messages that are exchanged between service provid-
ers and consumers are encoded using valid IMGT-ML streams. IMGT-ML can be
seen as a kind of Rosetta stone since it extends the ease of interconnection between
IMGT Web services and is the unique language used for both services inputs and
outputs. This ensures semantic consistency between exchanged messages as IMGT-
ML is an XML schema formalization of the IMGT-ONTOLOGY concepts (Chaume
et al. 2003).
1.6.3 IMGT
®
Web Services
Web services have been chosen as the means to create dynamic interactions between
IMGT
®
databases and tools. Clients and providers for these services can be
written using any SOAP-capable programming language such as SOAP::lite
(http://www.soaplite.com/), development library for Perl or webMethods Glue for
JAVA, thus facilitating the conversion of legacy applications to services. IMGT Web
services are developed using the JAVA programming language and deployed using the
Apache Axis (http://ws.apache.org/axis/) Web services development framework.
