caGrid and caBIG uses open source Java technology

While working on a research project for graduate school, I serendipitously stumbled upon the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG). This is a massive bioinformatics initiative to connect the entire cancer community leveraging modern information technology (IT) to save precious time toward news discoveries in cancer research. The caBIG Essentials tutorial is a must. It is available as a an online interactive tutorial or presentation download.

caBIG uses open source technology to bring cancer research into the 21st century. It is intertwined into a grid middleware infrastructure, caGrid, which is an information grid for biomedical research. (Bioinformatics Journal article abot caGrid) The really interesting aspect of caBIG and caGrid is that it uses open source Java technology and UML to make this all work. It is a service oriented architecture (SOA) using Apache Tomcat, Axis, UML, BPEL, Hibernate, etc. providing open specifications to allow organizations to adopt or adapt its IT systems to be caBIG Compatible.

The caGrid concept initiative originated December 2003. (caGrid wiki with timeline graphic) The initial prototype was brought online in July 2004. The following two and half years of work resulting in the caGrid 1.0 officially going live in December 2006. caGrid 1.1 was released in September 2007. This cutting edge work is in progress and will change the way biomedical informatics research is peformed in the future.

caBIG is model driven. That means you must have object models UML in order to transform your IT resources into compatible caBIG applications and services. caBIG provides/maintains the specifications, tookits, and SDKs. The possibilities for biomedical research breakthroughs leveraging the emerging bioinformatics field are endless.