The MouseAtlas is using CORBA in order to deliver data to the outside world. Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for distributed objects being developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). CORBA provides the mechanisms by which objects transparently make requests and receive responses, in a distributed heterogeneous environment. Beginners may want to look at the OMG beginner's guide to CORBA.

Current Status

We are planning to deliver all access to the Mouseatlas databases through CORBA and java. Local access may be through java applications while remote and public access will be through java applets.

In some cases applets will require access to local resources. In that case we will deliver signed applets for security reasons. We are using ObjectStore PSE to allow for the creation of localy cached data.

Image processing on the client side (java applets or applications) requires JNI wrappers to C libraries. As much as possible we will be using Java 2D imaging facilities, but at the time of writing this was not available in the form we need.

We currently have a working prototype of java applications accessing the anatomy data as well as the 3D reconstructions. We also have an application for data submission of gene expression. All of those applications currently make extensive use of the latest version of the Java JDK for interface definition (swing). We use Visibroker as our CORBA implementation.

We are planning to move the code to applets so that we can have the interfaces available for public review.

Other links to CORBA

EBI

EBI's research in CORBA.

CORBA at Roslin

Roslin's research in CORBA.

Life Sciences Research Group

The LSR Domain Special Interest Group is a consortium of people who are working together within the Object Management Group to improve communication and interoperability among computational resources in life sciences research.

OMG

The Object Management Group