Microbase

As bioinformatics datasets grow ever larger, and analyses become increasingly complex, there is a need for data handling infrastructures to keep pace with developing technology. Large-scale bioinformatics analyses often require the use of multiple software tools, each of which may be computationally intensive. Microbase enables the construction and execution of complex analysis workflows across a cluster of machines. Workflows are not static entities and may be extended with new tools over time, without having to repeat any previously-completed computations. Microbase runs a low-overhead, symmetric compute client to utilise available Grid or Cloud compute resources. A cluster may be expanded or reduced elastically, simply by starting or stopping compute clients. Many bioinformatics analyses can be executed in an embarrassingly parallel fashion, and therefore exploit the inherent parallelism present in large-scale computing environments.

Documentation

To learn more about Microbase, please visit the online documentation, which includes the Microbase manual and tutorials.

Download

Microbase is a free software released under the terms of the LGPL (version 2.1), and its source code is available on Bitbucket.

Project team

• Keith Flanagan
• Anil Wipat

Funding

This work was funded by the EPSRC grants EP/G061394/1 and EP/C536444/1.