The DAS Registry^{V2.8.5 02 09 2010}

About

The DAS registration service provides a repository for registry and discovery of DAS (Distributed Annotation System) services. DAS servers are described with meta data like who is providing a server, what DAS commands are being understood by it, what type of data is being provided, etc.

DAS style XML-http as well as SOAP based web services can be used to interact with the DAS registry. This is used by DAS clients like EnsEMBL, SPICE, or Dasty to retrieve the list of available services.

In the future DAS servers like Dazzle or Proserver perhaps can automatically connect to the registration service and register or renew the lease for a DAS service.

Projects

Projects that fund DAS sources can be acknowledged. We are currently in the process in adding support for this also on the DAS client side. I.e. next to a DAS track the logo of the funding project should be displayed.

Validation

The registration server contains a validation mechanism, to make sure that a DAS source is registered properly. When registering a new service an accession code (segment id) needs to be provided. This is used to create a DAS request and validate the response. A service can only be registered if the provided accession code returns a DAS response that contains data.
To prevent the registration service from keeping track of old or even non-functional DAS services, a lease is assigned to each. If the lease is not renewed for a long period, a server might be removed from the registry, after a warning has been submitted to the administrator of the DAS service.