The Ensembl Web Site: Mechanics of a Genome Browser
Abstract
The Ensembl Web site (http://www.ensembl.org/) is the principal user interface to the data of the Ensembl project, and currently serves >500,000 pages (∼2.5 million hits) per week, providing access to >80 GB (gigabyte) of data to users in more than 80 countries. Built atop an open-source platform comprising Apache/mod_perl and the MySQL relational database management system, it is modular, extensible, and freely available. It is being actively reused and extended in several different projects, and has been downloaded and installed in companies and academic institutions worldwide. Here, we describe some of the technical features of the site, with particular reference to its dynamic configuration that enables it to handle disparate data from multiple species.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material available online at www.genome.org.]
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Article and publication are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.1863004.
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↵3 Corresponding author. E-MAIL JWS{at}sanger.ac.uk; FAX 1223 494919.
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- Accepted November 25, 2003.
- Received August 8, 2003.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
