What is the CLSD service, and how do I use it?

Username:
Password:

The Indiana University Centralized Life Sciences Data (CLSD) service provides publicly available life sciences data to the IU and TeraGrid research communities as a single, integrated collection. This collection includes dbSNP, Saccaromyces Genome Database, PubMed, and several NCBI BLAST databases including NT, NR, and SP.

CLSD offers the following advantages to researchers:

You can access data from multiple datasets using a single Structured Query Language (SQL) query.
You can execute BLAST searches within CLSD by using modified SQL queries, and merge the results of those searches with data from other databases.
You can issue large numbers of queries against datasets, which would be a very tedious process through other interfaces such as the NCBI Entrez system.

CLSD uses IBM's data federation technology, Information Integrator, which includes IBM's DB2 Relational Database. For more, see the CLSD page on the UITS Research Technologies web site.

Accessing CLSD

There are two categories of use:

Access via Web forms, the AIX command-line interface, IBM's DB2 Control Center client, and Web Services (e.g., SOAP) requires an account on IU's Research Database Cluster. To get an account:
- IU faculty and staff can submit the Research Technologies Account Application. Under "Comments", specify that you need a local and persistent password for CLSD.
- TeraGrid users can email data@indiana.edu describing their TeraGrid research and how they'll use CLSD.
If you have an account on the Research Database Cluster but haven't used DB2, email the High Performance Systems (HPS) group to request a local and persistent password for using CLSD.

For more, see How can I access data in CLSD?
Access via the Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF), as implemented using the Perl module WSRF::Lite, does not require authentication.
To use CLSD via WSRF, write a Perl program that uses one of the WSRF protocols to interact with a Web Service running on a WSRF container on discern.uits.iu.edu:8422. For an example, see How do I access CLSD using WSRF? For more, see Perl examples for accessing CLSD or the documents listed below.

This document was developed with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 0503697 to the University of Chicago and subcontracted to Indiana University. Additional support was provided by IU through its participation in the TeraGrid, which is supported by the NSF under Grants No. 0833618, SCI451237, SCI535258, and SCI504075. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

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Last modified on May 13, 2009.