Life science data is valuable and hard to produce; it is important to share it in order to promote discovery. Effective database interoperability will facilitate the way life science data is accessed, retrieved, analyzed, and combined with other data. The original effort with focus on life science data, specifically databases concerned with four organisms, a plant, an animal, an insect and a simple eukaryote. General purpose databases of sequence and structure will also be integrated. The provision of methods for integrating proprietary data as well as public data will enable collaborations with industry. The system is based on a mediator-wrapper approach, which will be automated through wrapper induction, by using a domain ontology and independent source data models. The system will help overcome the scalability, maintenance and upgrade challenges in many life science databases.
