Hello,
I'm Kevin Garwood a software developer for Pedro
(http://pedrodownload.man.ac.uk). The tool basically takes a variety of
XML Schemas and renders data entry forms for them. Users use the forms
to create files that will validate against the original schema.
The application was originally developed to support the PEDRo proteomics
model and played a significant role in promoting the standard to other
people. You can read more about it in the 2003 Nature Biotech Paper:
"A systematic approach to modeling, capturing, and disseminating
proteomics experimental data"
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v21/n3/abs/nbt0303-247.html
The tool doesn't have a single line of domain-specific code - we had to
make it this way in order to cope with changes we were experiencing in
the proteomics model. With that in mind, we knew we could apply Pedro
to other domains. Since its initial release a little over a year ago,
it has been applied to genomics and distributed computing areas of
research. We've recently had interest from groups in health informatics
and quantum chemistry to use it as a tool to help rapidly develop models
that can be validated with an end-user focus group.
If you go to the "Download Models" page, you'll see that Pedro can load
the MAGE genomics model. The download includes a couple of test files
of microarray data that were taken from the EBI's Array Express site.
I'd just like to say thanks to the EBI's Helen Parkinson, Kai Runte and
Chris Taylor for helping out on this.
Pedro doesn't just make record field forms - it also allows data
modellers to associate controlled vocabulary services with text fields.
If you download the MAGE-ML model from the site, you'll discover that an
MGED ontology service has been associated with the OntologyEntry
record's "category" and "value" fields. If you'd like to see how
sophisticated Pedro's controlled vocabulary services can get, try
downloading the "ontology.zip" model from the site.
The release is hosted on source forge under the Academic Free License.
The tool will be supported for the proteomics community and we do care
that it works.
Cheers,
Kev
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Kevin Garwood
Software Developer
Computer Science Department
Work: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~garwood
Play: http://uk.geocities.com/zaredbaron
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