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. 2008 Jul 1;36(Web Server issue):W372-6.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gkn252. Epub 2008 May 8.

The Ontology Lookup Service: more data and better tools for controlled vocabulary queries

Richard G Côté  1 , Philip Jones, Lennart Martens, Rolf Apweiler, Henning Hermjakob
Affiliations

The Ontology Lookup Service: more data and better tools for controlled vocabulary queries

Richard G Côté et al. Nucleic Acids Res. .

Abstract

The Ontology Lookup Service (OLS) (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols) provides interactive and programmatic interfaces to query, browse and navigate an ever increasing number of biomedical ontologies and controlled vocabularies. The volume of data available for querying has more than quadrupled since it went into production and OLS functionality has been integrated into several high-usage databases and data entry tools. Improvements have been made to both OLS query interfaces, based on user feedback and requirements, to improve usability and service interoperability and provide novel ways to perform queries.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Growth chart of the OLS data content. The amount of data loaded into the OLS, based on unique terms, has more than quadrupled since the service went online. Note that the large increase in 2006 is largely due to the incorporation of the NEWT taxonomy.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The interactive OLS user interface. A suggest-as-you-type search mechanism provides users with interactive term lists based on their input. Once a term is selected, known metadata are obtained and displayed. Users can browse an ontology using the selected term as a starting point. Using the ontology browser, term relations can be navigated. Highlighting a term will load metadata and provide a graphical display of all paths from that term to the ontology root(s).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Two Java applications using the SOAP interface. An ontology browser demo application and a term search demo application can be downloaded from the OLS website to illustrate the ease with which OLS functionality can be integrated within existing applications.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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