ARS | Publication request: SoyBase Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol (SSWAP) Services

Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: January 9, 2009
Publication Date: January 13, 2009
Citation: Nelson, R., Grant, D.M., Gangwal, P., Shoemaker, R.C. 2009. SoyBase Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol (SSWAP) Services [abstract]. Plant and Animal Genome Conference. Poster No. P798.

Technical Abstract: Semantic web technologies offer the potential to link internet resources and data by shared concepts without having to rely on absolute lexical matches. Thus two web sites or web resources which are concerned with similar data types could be identified based on similar semantics. In the biological sciences, the two most widely known protocols are Semantic BioMoby (S-Moby) and BioMoby Services (Moby-S) concepts. A derivative of the S-Moby concept has been developed by the National Center for Genome Research (NCGR) called simple semantic web architecture and protocol (SSWAP). SSWAP relies on a common semantic upon which individual service and data providers advertise their services and deliver content. The underlying semantic relationships allow a program to proceed through the semantic relationships and determine analogous concepts without relying on exact lexical matches. Reliance on semantic reasoning is important in that most species database were developed with idiosyncratic naming conventions for each data type. By linking each data type to a common semantic, data can be retrieved without reliance on a curator identifying analogous concepts in another database. This will allow computer algorithms to identify and transfer data more efficiently. The USDA soybean genetics and genomics database (SoyBase) has prepared and deployed twelve SoyBase SSWAP services and registered them with the SSWAP Discovery Server (http://sswap.info) which allows semantic data searching and retrieval capabilities for data contained in the SoyBase soybean breeder’s toolbox database. A description of the SoyBase services and their operation along with details on the integration with SSWAP will be presented.