AMITA Database WEB Portals A web portal is typically an electronic meeting place, a common ground for a community that benefits from sharing a common interest. Your partners, colleagues, or the public at large may visit your portal to add or retrieve useful data (e.g. research data, news items, links). Web portals typically begin by focusing on one subject then expand from it into avenues that benefit its entire community. It extends into other web sites that deal with the same subject, and grows symbiotically in value to cater to new communities of interest. An example is the AMITA-built, owned and managed www.itravelsafe.com. A web portal lets you: Get efficient access to relevant information about a subject Get related information without having to sift through a heap of unrelated information Access information that meets certain quality criteria and community standards One-stop-spot to find current information on a specific subject and related subjects The convenient access to well-organised and relevant information is the beauty of WEB Portals, not the technology behind it. AMITA takes the portal concept to another level of refinement, the database portal. Data is coming at us in ever greater volume, at a higher velocity, and in more different ways than we can reasonably handle. Bioinformatics labs, for example, have accumulated more genomic and proteomic data through global collaborative efforts in the last two years than they have in all precedent years combined. A database portal can effectively address situations that require one to manage complex structured information and relationships from varied sources. To combine two sources of data is difficult, typically different data types represent the same information, different level s of data accuracy and quality are required, different level of details, different technology, different time currency, etc. To bring together and maintain a number of different databases from different locations deepens the problem and becomes a virtual nightmare for the owners of the data. To database professionals, however, this opportunity is a pure delight. AMITA will navigate this deep database problem space for you. We can pull together all the different databases you wish to combine and harmonise the data. A great number of databases can be combined this way. Integrated databases provide more valuable information than isolated databases; this usually increases the value of each database. The process involves a high degree of data analysis and communication with subject matter experts from the different databases. Once the data requirements are thoroughly understood, AMITA will build the software to bring the data together using the most efficient tools. To make the portal complete AMITA will build the user interface which will be used to present the data in an easily understood form. The same considerations as for building Web based systems have to be taken into account. See Global Web development service. An AMITA database portal will enable you to leverage your different data sources to get ever increasing returns on your data assets.