At present, compatibility problems prevent researchers from cooperating in using bioinformatics to solve important biological problems. Web services might be a way to solve this integration problem. Web technology provides a higher layer of abstraction that hides implementation details from applications so that each organization can concentrate on its own competence and still leverage the services other research groups provide.

To test the potential of a Web services solution, the authors implemented a microarray data mining system that uses Web services in drug discovery--a research process that attempts to identify new avenues for developing therapeutic drugs. Although their implementation focuses on a problem within the life sciences, they strongly believe that Web services could be a boon to any research field that requires analyzing and mining large volumes of data.