Integrating biological research through Web services

Web services might be a way to solve the integration problem because Web services technology provides a higher layer of abstraction that hides implementation details from applications. Using this technology, applications invoke other applications´ functions through well-defined, easy-to-use interfaces. To test the potential of a Web services solution, we implemented a microarray data-mining system that uses Web services in drug discovery - a research process that attempts to identify new avenues for developing therapeutic drugs. Although our implementation focuses on a problem within the life sciences, we strongly believe that Web services could be a boon to any research field that requires analyzing volumes of data and conducting complex data mining.