Figure 4

Implementation of an Interface Generator. The GenePattern server provides a web-based interface for modules that perform bioinformatics analyses. Because the parameters for a Score Signatures analysis change frequently with updates to the Signature Database, the interface for Score Signatures cannot be defined until run-time. To address this, we have extended GenePattern so that it can create the interface for modules dynamically by querying an interface generator. The interface generator for Score Signatures queries the signature database at run-time to produce an up-to-date interface for GenePattern. Once the user has specified their values for the parameters, GenePattern invokes the Score Signatures module to perform the analysis. This is a general mechanism that can be applied to other complex analyses.