Table 1 Exemplary set of services. Fragment of a component library that we used in the examples. The table lists the names of the building blocks (SIBs) along with function descriptions and selected service predicates.

Archaeopteryx

Displays a phylogenetic tree [49].

type:visualization, location:local, contributor:forester.org

BLAST

BLAST [63] against a DDBJ database.

type:analysis, location:ddbj, contributor:ddbj

ClustalW

Runs ClustalW [64].

type:analysis, location:ddbj, contributor:ddbj

Emma

EMBOSS [48] interface to ClustalW.

type:analysis, location:ebi, contributor:emboss

ExtractPattern

Extracts all parts of a string that match a regular expression.

type:stringprocessing, location:local, contributor:jabc

GetDDBJEntry

Fetches an entry in at file format from a DDBJ database [51].

type:dataretrieval, location:ddbj, contributor:ddbj

GetFASTA_DDBJEntry

Fetches an entry in FASTA format from a DDBJ database [51].

type:dataretrieval, location:ddbj, contributor:ddbj

List2String

Concatenates all entries of a list.

type:stringprocessing, location:local, contributor:jabc

MatchString

Tries to match a string against a regular expression pattern.

type:condition, location:local, contributor:jabc

PutExpression

Stores a user-supplied context expression or its value into the execution context.

type:definition, location:local, contributor:jabc

PutInteger

Provides an integer value.

type:definition, location:local, contributor:jabc

RepeatLoop

Realizes a counting loop.

type:loop, location:local, contributor:jabc

ReplaceString

Replaces substrings of a string with another character sequence.

type:stringprocessing, location:local, contributor:jabc

ShowInputDialog

Input dialog, provides a string.

type:definition, location:local, contributor:jabc

WSDBFetch

Gets sequences from an EBI database [44, 45].

type:dataretrieval, location:ebi, contributor:ebi