As part of the RASOR project, I have been tasked to implement technologies to interface across proteomic and genomic data. The focus of this project is improved data handling, storage and distribution through an integrated LIMS systems as a foundation to the establishment of an integrated relational database. On the face of it, this is classic data integration of two heterogeneous data systems, however given the nature of the data sources, proteomics data and genomics data, actual integration would be minimal since the overlapping data elements are few. The data are semantically different and therefore not only are they difficult to physically integrate but the process would add little value to the data itself. Since the actual reason for integration is to query the data as a unit, it is more important to the data users to have the data in a form that allows querying across these data. Semantic integration promises to provide exactly this capability.
The rasor project proposes to use semantic web technologies to interface across genomic and proteomic data. At the moment I am focusing on Globally Unique Identifers. URI's, Uniform Resource Identifier, forms the base technology on which RDF, Resource Description Framework was developed. All things on the Semantic Web are resources, and all resources may be identified by URIs. LSID's a type of URI (URN, Uniform Resource Name (URN): a type of URI that identifies a resource by name in a particular namespace) form one potential mechanism of globally unique identification.