Application of XML database technology to biological pathway datasets.

The study of biological systems has accumulated a significant amount of biological pathway data, which is evident through the continued growth in both the number of databases and amount of data available. The development of BioPAX standard leads to the increased availability of biological pathway datasets through the use of a special XML format, but the lack of standard storage mechanism makes the querying and aggregation of BioPAX compliant data challenging. To address this shortcoming, we have developed a storage mechanism leveraging the existing XML technologies: the XML database and XQuery. The goal of our project is to provide a generic and centralized store with efficient queries for the needs of biomedical research. A SOAP-based Web service and direct HTTP request methods have also developed to facilitate public consumption of the datasets online.