Tripal
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Tripal is a collection of Drupal modules under development at the Clemson University Genomics Institute (CUGI) that serve as a web front-end for the GMOD Chado database. Tripal intially started as a web front-end for the Marine Genomics Project (MG.org). Work on the interface is currently ongoing for the MG.org project as well as the Fagaceae Genomics Web, and other CUGI projects. Collaborators on the project include investigators from the Hollings Marine Lab, The Medical University of South Carolina, the Main Bioinformatics Laboratory at Washington State University and Clemson's CyberInfrastructure Technology Integration group. The software will be released for public open-source use by the summer of 2009. A beta version and documentation of the package can be downloaded from here
Documentation
Advantages to Drupal
Drupal provides several benefits as a front-end for Chado, including:
- A content management system that allows ordinary users to provide and update content.
- A web framework that provides a simplified API for creating online forms, pages, content blocks, etc.
- Free, it's open-source!
- Large community, active development, and well documented.
- A large collection of publicly available modules that instantly enhance a site and reduce development time.
- Includes an infrastructure for managing user and data access permissions.
- Built-in and extendable full-text searching capability.
- Highly customizable:
- Users add content in an easy intuitive manner.
- Web designers create a custom "look-and-feel" for their Drupal sites.
- Programmers develop new modules for new content types and functionality.
- Provides social-networking functionality such as commenting, social bookmarking, etc.
Advantages to Tripal
Upon initial release, Tripal will provide several benefits:
- Quick development of an online genomic database.
- Integrates directly with GMOD Chado.
- Provides visualizations for chado "modules" such as features, analyses, libraries, etc.
- Provides an interface for easy editing/updating of data in Chado.
- Provides full text and categorical search capabilities for Chado content.
- Can integrate GMOD tools such as CMap and GBrowse.
Future aspirations for Tripal
- Web-based Chado installation.
- Built-in data management utilities for bulk load of data.
- A workflow infrastructure for online data analysis through online tools.
- integration with high-performance/high-throughput computational resources.
Support
Questions on Tripal can be posted to the mailing list.
| Mailing List Link | Description | Archive(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tripal | gmod-tripal | Tripal-related announcements, questions, and requests for help from developers and the community. | Nabble (2010/05+), Sourceforge |
| gmod-tripal-devel | Tripal development list | Nabble, Sourceforge |
Tripal was developed and is maintained by Clemson University Genomics Institute (CUGI). Tripal development is led by Stephen Ficklin. CUGI also offers custom Tripal development (and premium support) on a fee basis. Contact Stephen Ficklin for more information.
