Inaugural Post

This blog will be populated with posts about using the REBOL programming language in the field of bioinformatics. Why REBOL? Why bioinformatics? I just happened to be learning both at the same time. I thought that trying to use REBOL to access biological data might be a good way to learn both. In effect, the following posts will chronicle this learning experience.  You will probably also be witness to my making mistakes in both areas, as well. ;-)

Nowadays, there are literally dozens of publicly accessible bioinformatic databases. Many of these databases have excellent web-based interfaces. But there are times when one needs to access this information programmatically. To that end, a number of packages and libraries have been created for a variety of languages. The following websites are good starting points to learn more about BioPerl, BioPython and BioJava.

REBOL is a remarkable scripting language; I will only touch on part of its capabilities. Please visit the REBOL website for pointers to tutorials and other learning resources. In the next post we will begin to learn how to search through on-line bioinformatic data.