A Comparison of Federated Databases with Web Services for the Integration of Bioinformatics Data

Between technological breakthroughs and new computational approaches, the amount of biological data is increasing explosively. Currently, there are many data integration approaches that can provide biologists central and uniform access to all kinds of biological data. To minimize the disruption of current operations, maintain local autonomy and handle heterogeneities, Federated Databases and Web Services have been proposed as candidate solutions. The Web Services approach offers the most flexibility. However, the performance of Web Services has been a concern for many developers. This paper describes a comparison based on our experience with both approaches. It discusses the trade-offs among performance, support for heterogeneity, robustness and scalability. Of significance, is the discovery that the Web Services approach performs very competitively.

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