Adopt or Adapt Tools

There are two basic ways to become connected with caBIG™:

Adopt a caBIG™ Tool and then Connect to the Grid: You can connect with caBIG™ by adopting pre-existing caBIG™-compatible tools and then connecting through caGrid. This is best if you need domain-specific tools, caBIG™ has tools that meet these needs, and you are prepared to install the caBIG™ tools and integrate them into your workflow.

Adopting may be best if …

• You have requirements that caBIG™ tools can fulfill in the domains of clinical trials, bench research, imaging, and/or tissue banking.
• End users are open to learning new tools and integrating them in their workflow.
• You do not have a technical team available to build or reengineer software, but you can leverage internal resources to support a software installation effort.

Adapt a Tool to make it caBIG™-Compatible and then Connect to the Grid: If you have a tool (either created in-house or by a vendor) that is not caBIG™-compatible, you can achieve compatibility by reengineering the existing tool or creating an interface that maps an existing tool’s data structures and APIs to caBIG™ standards. Once the tool is compatible, you can connect to the Grid.

Adapting may be best if...

• You have existing technology infrastructure and tools that meet the needs of the users, and that are already integrated into workflows.
• You have technical team(s) available with (1) software development expertise, particularly in the areas of data modeling and application programming interface (API) development. (2) Previous experience with the NCI’s vocabulary and data model tools/repositories.

While “adopt or adapt” are the two basic ways to connect with caBIG™, hybrid approaches exist. Here are two examples:

• Integrate a caBIG™ module within your existing bioinformatics infrastructure, and develop an interface to facilitate data exchange between them.
• Create a caBIG™-compatible “wrapper” around an existing tool, so that data appropriate for external data sharing can be more easily served, while not reengineering an entire tool.

Next Steps

Life on the Grid