SEARCH TIPS | WHAT IS THIS? (example searches: cerebellum, genetic analysis software, gene:grm1)
Developer Tools
*Tutorials for the developer tools can be found here*
NIF Services
We provide a range of web services for accessing data and vocabularies. Most of these services are REST (Representational State Transfer) based. The format input parameters can be found in the description of individual services below and output parameters can be primitive data type or XML schema. More information about REST clients can be found here http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/.
We are constantly adding new resources and information accessible through the NIF search. Currently we have published REST based access for the following resources:
Ontology: These services provide access to the NIF vocabularies with the capabilities to query for concepts and relationships. More information about these services is available at https://confluence.crbs.ucsd.edu/display/NIF/OntoQuestMain.
Database Index Query Services: These services allow access to the NIF Data Federation index where the users can search for the records in the neuroscience databases (indexed by NIF) that match the keyword or concept using a programmatic interface. For more information about these services visit, https://confluence.crbs.ucsd.edu/display/NIF/NIF+Web+Services.
SPARQL Endpoint
The SPARQL endpoint hosted on NIF contains NIFSTD ontology data, referenced as http://ontology.neuinfo.org, as the default graph URI, which provides NIF with the vocabularies needed to search for the query term as well as related concepts and additional terms. When a query is placed, by default the results are displayed in an HTML table format.
More information and an illustrated example on SPARQL endpoint available here.
NIF Registry Services: The SPARQL endpoint hosted for NeuroLex contains triples generated from the NeuroLex RDF (Resource Description Framework). Essentially, these triples retrieve information by searching for the relationship defined by the user between the two queried terms.
For more information and an illustrated example, refer to the NeuroLex entry.
RDF Data
The RDF Data on NIF is powered by the SPARQL endpoint hosted for NeuroLex. A key aspect of RDF is that it utilizes statements in a simple subject-predicate-object format (called a triple) yet is able to output the desired information based on queried terms. It is important to remember that the program does not know what the word means, so it is left to the application writer to determine appropriate names for things and to choose the appropriate predicates.
NIF is also working on making RDF (Resource Description Framework) version of the data available to the user. RDF is a World Wide Web Consortium’s standard for encoding knowledge in to data.
More information about RDF and currently available data in RDF format visit https://confluence.crbs.ucsd.edu/display/NIF/RDF+datasets+on+NIF
DISCO
http://disco.neuinfo.org/webportal
NIF LinkOut Broker
NIF Statistics
NIF Version: 5.0
Ontology Version: 2.5
Level 2.5/3.0 Resources: 889
Registry Entries: 6,339
Total Records: 356,197,652
NIF Navigator
