A primary goal of a research infrastructure for data management should be to
enable efficient data discovery and integration of heterogeneous data. The
German Federation for Biological Data (GFBio) was envisioned by this goal. The
basic component, that enables such interoperability and serves as a backbone
for such a platform, is the GFBio Terminology Service (GFBio TS). It acts as a
semantic platform for accessing, developing and reasoning over terminological
resources within the biological and environmental domain. A RESTful API gives
access to these terminological resources in a uniform way regardless of their
degree of complexity and whether they are internally stored or externally
accessed through their web services. Additionally, a set of widgets with an
intrinsic API connection are made available for an easy integration in
applications and web interfaces. Based on the requirements of the GFBio
partners, we describe the added value that is provided by the GFBio
Terminology Service with practical scenarios but also, what challenges we
still face. We conclude by describing our current activities and future
developments
