The eLab provides an integrated search over all databases currently available within the EVOLTREE project.

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From the e-Lab, all distributed databases available in the EVOLTREE project are accessible. A search engine is available where users can place queries to the whole set of integrated databases. During the design process it has been decided that it would not be possible to contact all integrated databases at the moment when a user starts a query. This would lead to response times that would not be acceptable. Therefore, it was decided to build a cache database at a central point where collected data from the integrated databases is stored. The collection of data is done at frequent intervals so that the latest information is always available.

During a search request only the cache database is contacted to speed up the search process. In this way, data from databases which are currently offline is also available because it is stored in the cache database. In the search result, the user can view all information available in the cache for every result. If he wishes to see more details about a certain entry, he can click on it to be redirected to the external database corresponding to the active entry. In this way, the local database user interface shows more detailed information about the current entry.

For better illustration see the picture on the bottom of the page.

On top of the eLab, an EST search engine as well as a BLAST service against all available sequence information within EVOLTREE have been set up.