XMOD
From Myxopedia
[edit] XMOD Is Coming
In June 2008 xanthusBase.org will become XMOD-xanthus.org. xanthusBase.org hasn't had any major modifications in awhile, and the simple reason for this is that we have been working on the XMOD system and many of the new changes and features of XMOD are incompatible with the existing xanthusBase system.
The XMOD system is designed as a general purpose prokaryotic database system, targeted specially towards prokaryotic Model Organisms (MOs) with small research communities akin to the M.xanthus research community. For such MO communities central curation is not a feasible option and therefore a community driven curation model is ideal. A sister database for one such organism, Xenorhabdus nematophila, will be started at the same time xanthusBase.org moves to XMOD-xanthus.org and more are expected to follow.
XMOD-xanthus.org will be based on the current xanthusBase system. Other MOs hosted using the XMOD system will have their own idenpendent interfaces, urls and database tables but the software driving all XMOD databases will be identical. This will allow efficient updates to the software which will be broadly applied to across all sister database systems.
Below highlights some of the key features and changes expected in the migration from xanthusbase.org to XMOD:
* AJAX implementation: The user interface has been revamped to provide a more dynamic user experience. AJAX technology is implemented to avoid page refreshes and make a the users web experience more similar to the experience users are used to with desktop software. * microarray software * new BLAST server * Web based administration. * Student level access: a system to allow undergraduate students to contribute towards a genome annotation in a manner that does not compromise data integrity or reliability. * New web-host: Hosting will be moved to new a new commercial server to obtain better reliability and uptime. Software development will still be done in the Welch lab at Syracuse University.
Also in the works in a open source release of all XMOD code. The backend of the database has been migrated completely to a MySQL environment (which is free software) although users will have the option of using a ORACLE database if licensing is available to them, which will provide a slight performance increase. Note that although we are releasing the code to the public, communities that would like an XMOD database will not be required to host their own databases. Communities will have the option of having us host their database. The only requirement will be that each community have someone who is willing to handle administration of their database (in terms of creating and distributing user accounts etc.)
More details on XMOD to come..
--Bradley Arshinoff 17:52, 23 April 2008 (EDT)
