FindAModelModeller

Overall goals

See FindAModel

This use-case describes a modeller wanting to locate a model or models that satisfy particular attributes. I view this as a process of acquiring the properties of models they are interested in, returning sets of models that satisfy these, and letting them further refine or broadening their search by supplying additional information about properties or adding more properties to be used.

We assume people are used to search interfaces such as

• selections within various form fields and simple Boolean operators
• tree-based navigation interfaces
• structure-based visual interfaces such as anatomical structures, biochemical pathways etc., i.e. visual representations they are used to seeing in publications and other online resources.

They are probably less used to

• using the output of searching one system as input for searching another, though some bioinformatics databases do this on some occasions - e.g. enter GO term here, paste motif sequence in such-a-format-from-such-a-database(guess I should find some explicit examples of this).
• forming machine-level queries - e.g. SQL-type queries, RDF-queries, logic expressions.

Goals

• navigate through interfaces to biological entities, processes, and structures

  Use-case: Find a model through a visual navigation (FindAModelModellerVisualNavigationInterface)

• enter or select terms and form boolean operations on them

  Use-case: Find a model through search interface (FindAModelModellerSearchInterface)

• submit data representing a model in a particular format, perhaps from another modelling, representation, or database environment - the data being used to return models that share properties with the data. Example : submit BioPax instance, submit a CellML model.

  Use-case: modeller finds a model by submitting a model in a particular format (FindAModelModellerSubmitFormatedData)