Exploiting Agent and Database Technologies for Biological Data Collection

Web da a sources cons i u e an impor an resource for Biological research. A simple ool ha can re rieve informa ion from differen Web si es hrough a single in erface and s ore he ex rac ed da a in a s andardized forma for efficien la er u se is cri ical o scien ific discovery. In his paper we discuss an approach ha combines agen and da abase echnologies for biological da a in egra ion. To illus ra e his, we employ wo sof ware ools: WinAgen , for building agen s, and dbXML, for XML da a managemen . WinAgen learns from i s users by recording a browsing session on Web si es and successive da a ex rac ion from regions of in eres on re rieved Web pages. The resul s are s ored in a XML documen and can be managed, queried and upda ed using a na ive XML da abase sys em such as dbXML. This approach is curren ly being evalua ed a he Brain Tumor Cancer Uni of he Transla ional Genomics Research Ins i u e (TGen), Phoenix, Arizona. 1