An overlay-network approach for distributed access to SRS

SRS is a widely used system for integrating biological databases. Currently, SRS relies only on locally provided copies of these databases. In this paper we propose a mechanism that also allows the seamless integration of remote databases. To this end, our proposed mechanism splits the existing SRS functionality into two components and adds a third component that enables us to employ peer-to-peer computing techniques to create optimized overlay-networks within which database queries can efficiently be routed. As an additional benefit, this mechanism also reduces the administration effort that would be needed with a conventional approach using replicated databases.