ARCHIVED: What is the Indiana University Centralized Life Sciences Data (CLSD) service?

The Indiana University Centralized Life Sciences Data (CLSD) service provides publicly available life sciences data to the TeraGrid research community 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.

If you are a US researcher and you're interested in using this service, UITS invites you to contact the Indiana University TeraGrid Research Partner site, the Research Technologies division of IU. This service is being offered in pilot mode at present. We are actively soliciting input on what data sources and access methods would be most useful for researchers and looking for partners to test and expand the service.

Accessing CLSD 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 using WSRF::Lite to interact with the WSRF service running on the WSRF container at discern.uits.iu.edu:8422. To see an example of a Perl program that sends an SQL query to CLSD using WSRF, see How do I access CLSD using WSRF?

Accessing CLSD via any non-WSRF interface requires authentication credentials for accessing the Research Database Complex at IU (see At IU, what is the Research Database Complex?). Research Technologies can help TeraGrid researchers set up such credentials.

For more information, email Research Technologies or visit IU's CLSD service web site.

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.

Also see:

• What is SQL?
• Bioinformatics support
• What is the CLSD service, and how do I use it?
• How can I access data in CLSD?
• How do I access CLSD via JDBC?
• Can I access CLSD as a Web Service?
• How can I use SQL in CLSD?
• How can I use SQL to access multiple data resources within CLSD?
• How can I get help with CLSD?
• How can I get help writing SQL queries for dbSNP data?