Open fly data: The way to go for biological data integration

Abstract

Although many applications have attempted to provide integrative access to distributed datasets, domain scientists largely continue to harvest research data in a conventional way, by consulting each resource independently, because such applications do not fully meet users' needs. This paper describes OpenFlyData ( http://openflydata.org/ ), a simple user-led service providing Drosophila researchers with integrated access to distributed information. This is an exemplar lightweight solution to the problems of data integration, in which accurate and explicit data modelling enables high precision information retrieval. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.