Web services and workflow management for biological resources

Backgorund: The completion of the Human Genome Project has resulted in large quantities of biological data which are proving difficult to manage and integrate effectively. There is a need for a system that is able to automate accesses to remote sites and to "understand" the information that it is managing in order to link data properly. Workflow management systems combined with Web Services are promising Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools. Some have already been proposed and are being increasingly applied to the biomedical domain, especially as many biology-related Web Services are now becoming available. Information on biological resources and on genomic sequences mutations are two examples of very specialized datasets that are useful for specific research domains.