übertool

science factory's übertool is a software system for the integration and analysis of molecular biological data. The system provides scientists with over 200 types of bioinformatic methods and enables access to public biological databases and proprietary data including all überTOOL results. Using an integrated programming language, the customer can also easily extend the core functions. Interactive browsers for different biological data types and diverse expansion possibilities simplify the collaboration of the various users within the scalable client-server system in a unique way.

übertool on the scientist's desktop enables its users to perform bioinformatics research. With the means of data and method integration, the user can do his research in an very straight forward way. The data from various sources are integrated and can be accessed despite there origin or former technical format. The user can pick from more then 200 different modules to build a bioinformatics application according to his scientific needs. After the application has yield results, these results can be viewed either with specialized viewers (e.g. for sequences, expression data, to mention some) or generic reports. If the available data or methods are not sufficient, a skilled user (“administrator”) can extend both the data (importing more data), the data model (importing new types of data), and implement more functionality either compiled programs (C/C++) or scripts (python). New and specialized viewers can be created by the science factory as a customizing service.

übertool as an environment for the rapid development of bioinformatics applications has a different approach. Here, a skilled user creates python scripts and so utilizes the data integration and all of the methods integrated in überTOOL. Such scripts can run from a command line or be executed via a Web Server. The results are in plain text (script-output) and have to be prepared to present them to end-users.