Diff for "BioWebServiceConnectivity"

TableOfContents([2])

Proposal

(Still under construction!)

These days, there are many public biological database web wervices such as [http://www.biomart.org/ Biomart], [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/esoap_help.html NCBI], or [http://www.genome.jp/kegg/soap/ KEGG]. It is very useful for many users if Cytoscape have an unified access to those huge data resources through simple user interface. By this function, users can access virtually all kinds of annotations for the nodes and edges, including variety of ID's, sequences, descriptions, orthologs, pathway names which contains the nodes, etc. Also, this is a general solution for all types of node ID mapping problems Cytoscape currently have. In addition, users can access network (interaction) database web services through the same mechanism.

From plugin writers' point of view, simplified API for accessing web services enables them to use a lot of remote functions just like other Cytoscape API. This means plugin writers can use web services as building blocks to build their workflow.

The goal of this project is the following:

• Implement a mechanism to manage web service clients in the Cytoscape core (Web Service Client Manager).

• Design an interface which wraps each web service client.
• Design mechanism how web service clients communicate with the core (custom event handling).
• Implement an simple GUI for importing annotations and networks from the web services.

Biological Questions / Use Cases

• User loaded network with EntrezGene ID as node identifier into Cytoscape. He/she needs to import annotation files with Gene Symbol as the key.

• I need to check the orthologs for the genes in my network.

• I want to expand existing network with known interaction data in [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/intact/site/index.jsf IntAct]

• Mapping known pathways onto network data in Cytoscape.
• Executing an analysis program running on remote server which is implemented as a web service.

General Notes

Each web service is a building block to make higher-level functions. This means plugin writers should be able to use registered web services as if they are local Java APIs. To achive this goal, we should be careful to separate UI from the web service clients.

Requirements

This project consists of five parts:

1. Web Service Client Manager in the core
   • Maintaining list of web service clients.
   • GUI to view/edit properties of the clients.
2. Attribute mapping module

   • Mapping fetched annotations onto CyAttributes.

3. Event Handlers

   • Implementing custom event and its listener only for WebServiceClients

   • Higher-level functions, such as importNetwork(Object query) or importAttribute(Object query) will be called through this event handler.

4. Sample Web Service Clients
   • Implement several web service clients for popular biological databases.
   • Each client is a jar file which contains properties and classes created from WSDL. They will be implemented as a regular Cytoscape plugins and loaded through Plugin Manager.
   • If WSDL is not available (like Biomart), we need to implement a simple stub to access the service.
5. GUI for each web services
   • GUI to use web services will be implemented as separate plugins. Simple GUI for importing attributes and networks will be provided as a part of core.

Deferred Items

Open Issues

• Taxonomy of the services
• Browsing UDDI Registory

Backward Compatibility

• Pathway Commons / cPath integration to the new simplifed Network Import GUI

Expected growth and plan for growth

• Connection / integration to [http://taverna.sourceforge.net/ Taverna] or other workflow engins (like [http://kepler-project.org/ Kepler]).

• More clients for other functions (analysis).
• Use web services in batch (headless/daemon) mode analysis (3.0 or later).

References

Biological Web Services

• [http://taverna.sourceforge.net/index.php?doc=services.html Biological Web Services] by myGrid/Taverna Project

• [http://www.biomart.org/martservice.html Biomart]

• [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/esoap_help.html NCBI Entrez E-Utilities SOAP Service]

• [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~intact/devsite/modules/ws.html IntAct Web Services]

• [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/uniprot/remotingAPI/ UniProtJAPI]

• [http://www.genome.jp/kegg/soap/ KEGG API]

• [http://www.reactome.org/cgi-bin/mart Reactome Mart Service] (Implemented by Biomart backend)

Technologies Around Web Service

• [http://ws.apache.org/axis/ Apache Axis]

• [https://metro.dev.java.net/ GlassFish Metro Project]

• [https://jax-ws.dev.java.net/ JAX-WS] (part of Metro project)

Implementation Plan

Web Service Client Manager

• attachment:wsc_design.png

Web Service Client Manager is a mechanism to manage list of clients loaded in Cytoscape. Usually, a Web Service Client (WSC) is created from a WSDL and packed as a jar file. The WSC jar file must contain classes implementing the following interfaces:

• CytoscapePlugin

• WebServiceClient

This means each of WSC is a Cytoscape plugin. Therefore, all WSC will be loaded through Plugin Manager which is already in the core. Once WSC is loaded through Plugin Manager, WSC registers itself to Web Service Client Manager. Plugin writers can access all web services by using the following method:

WebService Client client = WebServiceClientManager.getClient(client_name);

In general, most of the methods required for clients are common to all. To avoid duplicate code, each web service client extends the superclass called WebServiceClientImpl. Then, the actual client code will be similar to the following (this sample is for [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/intact/site/index.jsf IntAct] network database):

   1 public class IntactClient extends WebServiceClientImpl {
   2 
   3     // Define name and display name for this client
   4     private static final String DISPLAY_NAME = "IntAct PPI Database Client";
   5     private static final String SERVICE_NAME = "intact";
   6 
   7     // Client should be a singlton.
   8     private static WebServiceClient client;
   9 
  10     static {
  11         client = new IntactClient();
  12     }
  13 
  14     // Private constructor
  15     private IntactClient() {
  16         super(SERVICE_NAME, DISPLAY_NAME, ClientType.NETWORK);  
  17         stub = new BinarySearchServiceClient();
  18     }
  19 
  20     // This will be called from IntactClientPlugin.
  21     public static WebServiceClient getClient() {
  22         return client;
  23     }
  24 
  25     // Tentative method to catch the events from the core.
  26     public void webServiceEvent(CyWebWerviceEvent e) {
  27         if(e.getEventType.equals(IMPORT_NETWORK)) {
  28             importNetwork();
  29         }
  30     }
  31 
  32     private void importNetwork(Object query) {
  33         // Actual code to import network data through the stub will be here...
  34     } 
  35 
  36 }
  37 

And the class to register this as a plugin will be the following:

   1 public class IntactClientPlugin extends CytoscapePlugin {
   2         /**
   3          * Creates a new IntActClientPlugin object.
   4          */
   5         public IntactClientPlugin() {
   6                 // Register this client to the manager.
   7                 WebServiceClientManager.registerClient(IntactClient.getClient());
   8         }
   9 }
  10 

Plugin writers have two access method for these services:

• Through the Client Stub

  • By calling getStub() method, users can access all methods available from the service. Object type of the stub depends on the web service. For example, NCBI E-Utilities client returns EUtilsServiceSoap as the stub. If the client is registered properly, plugins can use it in the following way:

   1     // Get client from the manager.
   2     WebServiceClient ncbiClient = WebServiceClientManager.getClient("ncbi");
   3     // Then get the stub from the client.
   4     EUtilsServiceSoap ncbiStub = (EUtilsServiceSoap)ncbiClient.getStub();
   5     
   6     // Use the stub
   7     EInfoResult res = ncbiStub.run_eInfo(new EInfoRequest());
   8 

• Through CyWebServiceEvent

  • All clients implement !CyWebServiceEventListener and have mechanism to invoke method like importNetwork or importAttribute. Plugin writers can access these methods by firing events.

Custom Event Model

(Under construction)

Instead of using standard PropertyChange events, core and clients sending custom events.

CyWebServiceEvent

This event should contain the following information:

• Type of event (IMPORT_NETWORK, IMPORT_ATTRIBUTE, EXECUTE_ANALYSIS, etc.)
• Arguments (query command)

CyWebServiceEventListener

Individual Client Design

Based on the architecture above, we need to design and implement several web service clients for popular biological databases.

Shared Components

Web Service Clients (WSC) use the following components in the core:

1. Client Property and Tunables

   • WSC should have a WSCProperty object which includes basic information of the client and property values which controls the behaviour of WSC.

     • Basic information
       • End Point (URI of the service)
       • Description
     • Example property values:

       • Search Mode - keyword or ID list.

       • Maximum Number of Result - Limit the number of search result (interactions / gene IDs) returned by the service.

   • These values will be managed through Tunables class. Currently it is used only by the Layout Manager, but will be generalized to edit all property values for WSC.

   • All of these properties are accessible from WebServiceClientManagerDialog.

     • attachment:wscm_dialog.png

       Left panel shows available (loaded) WSC and its category in the core. Right panel displays editable properties generated by Tunable.

2. Network Import Panel
   • attachment:network_import_panel.png
3. Attribute Import Panel
   • attachment:attribute_import_panel.png

ID Mapping and Attribute Import

Biomart

attachment:biomartidmapping1.png

Biomart client mainly used as ID mapping.

UniProt

Recently, UniProt released UniProt Java Remoting API (UniProtJAPI). We will wrap this API with the WebServiceClient interface in Cytoscape.

KEGG

Network Import

IntAct

NCBI

• attachment:ncbi_network1.png

NCBI Entrez database has a unified web service called [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/esoap_java_help.html NCBI E-Utilities]. The [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene Entrez Gene] database will be the main resource for Cytoscape. This DB can be accessed through the E-Utilities web service. Users can use both keywords and list of Entrez Gene ID as the search term. Actual network data will be extracted form Interaction section of the returned data. Since we can extract interactions of one gene at a time, we need use Java SE 5's new Concurrency Framework to run multiple threads for fetching data efficiently.

Comments

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SarahKillcoyne August 16, 2007

This RFC would seem to be very related to the [:DataIntegration: Data Integration] one. Might be useful to discuss this as part of a larger web services integration if we decide a larger, more general solution would be useful.