QIS: A Framework for Biomedical Database Federation
- Affiliations of the authors: Center for Medical Informatics (LM, PLM, PN), Department of Anesthesiology (LM, PLM, PN), Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (PLM), Department of Neurobiology (GS), Yale University, New Haven, CT; and Turboworx, Inc., (T-YW) Shelton, CT
- Correspondence and reprints: Luis Marenco, MD, Center for Medical Informatics, Yale University School of Medicine, PO Box 208009, New Haven, CT 06520-8009; e-mail: <luis.marenco{at}yale.edu>
- Received 24 November 2003
- Accepted 23 June 2004
Abstract
Query Integrator System (QIS) is a database mediator framework intended to address robust data integration from continuously changing heterogeneous data sources in the biosciences. Currently in the advanced prototype stage, it is being used on a production basis to integrate data from neuroscience databases developed for the SenseLab project at Yale University with external neuroscience and genomics databases. The QIS framework uses standard technologies and is intended to be deployable by administrators with a moderate level of technological expertise: It comes with various tools, such as interfaces for the design of distributed queries. The QIS architecture is based on a set of distributed network-based servers, data source servers, integration servers, and ontology servers, that exchange metadata as well as mappings of both metadata and data elements to elements in an ontology. Metadata version difference determination coupled with decomposition of stored queries is used as the basis for partial query recovery when the schema of data sources alters.
Footnotes
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Supported by NIH grants P01 DC04732, G08 LM05583, and U01 ES10867.
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The authors thank David Tuck of the Yale Department of Pathology, Kei Cheung of the Yale Center of Medical Informatics, and Mihail Bota at the University of Southern California, part of the BAMS group.
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The existing QIS code base will be made freely available on request to the first author.
