ISYS：一个集成平台

[编者的话]

ISYS是一个由NCGR发布的一个基于网络的，具有即插即用性质的平台，用JAVA语言写成。其主要目标是：provides an intuitive，graphical environment for bioinformatics discovery，by integrating heterogeneous and separately-developed software components。现在对非商业用户是免费开放的。

New release of ISYS: A Platform for Integration

The National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) is pleased to announce that a "Users' Release" is now available of ISYS, our integration platform for bioinformatics resources.  An evaluation copy of the software can be downloaded for free at http://www.ncgr.org/research/isys.  While the system is free in general for non-commercial use, those interested in commercial applications should contact us for licensing information (isys@ncgr.org).

In addition to the components provided in our Developers' Release of last January, the ISYS platform now includes extensions that allow integration of web-based resources with client-side software tools.  We are excited to say that widely-used resources such as Entrez/PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi),SGD(http://genome-www.stanford.edu/Saccharomyces), Flybase (http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu), Genscan (http://genes.mit.edu/GENSCAN.html), and even Google (http://www.google.com) can now be made to exchange data to and from ISYS components with a few clicks of the mouse.  We think the system is considerably strengthened by the capacity to integrate customizable, client-side tools with powerful, Internet services for data and analysis.

Components that have been available for use with ISYS since the last release include NCGR's Sequence Viewer, Similarity Searcher, and Table Viewer, and "wrapped" versions of the maxdView gene expression viewer (http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/microarray) and BDGP Gene Ontology Browser (http://www.fruitfly.org).

See http://www.ncgr.org/research/isys/components.html for a description of these components.

ISYS provides an intuitive, graphical environment for bioinformatics discovery, by integrating heterogeneous and separately-developed software components.  Using the Broker and Event Channel software architectural patterns, it allows components to exchange "services" and to synchronize their behavior without being so tightly coupled that one component constrains the evolution of the others.  The user of the system can "plug-and-play" among available components, to establish a configuration appropriate for his or her needs.  Java programmers can relatively easily add new components by designing them from scratch, or by "wrapping" existing software.  The specifications for the ISYS API and other resources for software developers are available at http://www.ncgr.org/research/isys/devrel.html.