How Do I Choose The Proper Data Representation When Designing A Webportal

Question

[Mariam Rizkallah]

Hi, I am a pharmacy graduate, trained as protein annotator, and currently completing my software engineering diploma.

I am planning to set a MySQL/Python (Django framework) web portal with tables of chemicals from PubChem and microorganisms from NCBI Taxonomy. Do I need to have a complete set tables of the whole classification hierarchy? E.g., Taxa (domain, phylum... strain), chemical (organic chemical, amine.... chemical name).

Thanks.

[Michael Schubert]

That depends on what you are trying to achieve, which is not clear to me from the question.

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

Your question seems to be overly generic. Creating a webportal is a surprisingly challenging task as you will need to understand and interconnect vastly different dataypes moreover you will also need to create an accessible user interface to these. This task is far more difficult than solving a well defined scientific problem.

My advice would be to start small. Make a simple site with one simple use case then slowly add more functionality to it, occasionally you may need to go back and do a full redesign.

[Mariam Rizkallah]

Thank you, Dr. Albert for your advice. Yes, it's a whole new thing to me. It seemed more vague than I thought.

Answer 2

[Casey Bergman]

There is a recent article in PLoS Comp Biol that addresses this general question:

"Ten Simple Rules for Providing a Scientific Web Resource"

[Hranjeev]

Thanks thoroughly useful.