Computer Architecture Department, University of Malaga, Bulevar Luis Pasteur 35, 29071, Malaga, Spain.
Computer Languages and Computer Science Department, University of Malaga, Bulevar Luis Pasteur 35, 29071, Malaga, Spain.
BMC Genomics. 2018 Jan 16;19(1):56. doi: 10.1186/s12864-018-4439-x.
Technical advances in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have produced an extraordinary increase in their use around the world and have become part of our daily lives. The possibility of carrying these devices in a pocket, particularly mobile phones, has enabled ubiquitous access to Internet resources. Furthermore, in the life sciences world there has been a vast proliferation of data types and services that finish as Web Services. This suggests the need for research into mobile clients to deal with life sciences applications for effective usage and exploitation.
Analysing the current features in existing bioinformatics applications managing Web Services, we have devised, implemented, and deployed an easy-to-use web-based lightweight mobile client. This client is able to browse, select, compose parameters, invoke, and monitor the execution of Web Services stored in catalogues or central repositories. The client is also able to deal with huge amounts of data between external storage mounts. In addition, we also present a validation use case, which illustrates the usage of the application while executing, monitoring, and exploring the results of a registered workflow. The software its available in the Apple Store and Android Market and the source code is publicly available in Github.
Mobile devices are becoming increasingly important in the scientific world due to their strong potential impact on scientific applications. Bioinformatics should not fall behind this trend. We present an original software client that deals with the intrinsic limitations of such devices and propose different guidelines to provide location-independent access to computational resources in bioinformatics and biomedicine. Its modular design makes it easily expandable with the inclusion of new repositories, tools, types of visualization, etc.
移动设备（如智能手机和平板电脑）技术的进步使得它们在全球范围内的使用呈指数级增长，并已成为我们日常生活的一部分。将这些设备（尤其是移动电话）放在口袋中随身携带的可能性使人们能够随时随地访问互联网资源。此外，在生命科学领域，数据类型和服务呈爆炸式增长，最终都以 Web 服务的形式呈现。这表明需要研究移动客户端来处理生命科学应用程序，以实现有效使用和开发。
分析了现有生物信息学应用程序中管理 Web 服务的当前功能，我们设计、实现并部署了一个易于使用的基于 Web 的轻量级移动客户端。该客户端能够浏览、选择、组合参数、调用和监控存储在目录或中央存储库中的 Web 服务的执行情况。该客户端还能够处理外部存储挂载之间的大量数据。此外，我们还介绍了一个验证用例，该用例说明了在执行、监控和探索已注册工作流的结果时应用程序的使用情况。该软件可在 Apple Store 和 Android Market 中获得，并且源代码在 Github 上公开可用。
由于移动设备对科学应用具有强大的潜在影响，因此在科学界它们变得越来越重要。生物信息学不应落后于这一趋势。我们提出了一个原始的软件客户端，该客户端解决了此类设备的固有局限性，并提出了不同的指导原则，以提供生物信息学和生物医学中计算资源的位置独立访问。其模块化设计使其可以轻松扩展，包括新的存储库、工具、可视化类型等。
