Database interoperability through Web Services and ontologies

This paper reports on efforts towards database integration and interoperability, based on Web services and ontologies. The development of Web services software for three biological institutes is discussed. The software was created considering three major biological institutes which possess databases with heterogeneous information. The goal was to make this information available over the Internet, in the form of Web services so that they can be used from other applications over the Web. Moreover, we discuss how to extend this functionality through the use of ontologies so as to allow for more effective and automatic data integration.