Semantic Web Service provision: a realistic framework for Bioinformatics programmers.

UNLABELLED: Several semantic Web Services clients for Bioinformatics have been released, but to date no support systems for service providers have been described. We have created a framework ('MobyServlet') that very simply allows an existing Java application to conform to the MOBY-S semantic Web Services protocol. Using an existing Java program for codon-pair bias determination as an example, we enumerate the steps required for MOBY-S compliance. With minimal programming effort, such a deployment has the advantages of: (1) wider exposure to the user community by automatic inclusion in all MOBY-S client programs and (2) automatic interoperability with other MOBY-S services for input and output. Complex on-line analysis will become easier for biologists as more developers adopt MOBY-S. AVAILABILITY: The framework and documentation are freely available from the Java developer's section of http://www.biomoby.org/.