Joe Shaumbaugh

Programming in script-based languages such as Perl and Tcl is popular in life science disciplines such as bio- and cheminformatics, especially among developers at pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Adding the ability to use XML to pipe these scripts into more robust systems used in many bioinformatics computing environments lowers the entry hurdle for those with little or no programming experience in CORBA, Java, C, and C++. Although XML is no replacement for CORBA, adding XML can bring significant computing benefits along with huge time and cost savings if applied properly. Often, programming tools that offer the greatest flexibility and ease of use aren't the ones you'd use to deploy solutions to large numbers of people. Typically, tools are chosen to complete specific tasks, with some of the unseen implications given only secondary consideration. In the area of... (more)