The Future of Tripal: intuitive content creation, flexible data storage and web services

An increasing number of research communities are choosing to use Tripal to publish their genomic, genetic and related data in an online searchable format. Tripal uses the GMOD Chado database schema, a community-derived relational database schema, and Drupal, a popular content management system (CMS), to provide data-specific content pages, data loaders and simple search tools. With the increase in data magnitude, the need for more flexible data storage including direct use of BAM/VCF files and no-SQL technologies has arisen. Furthermore, the desire to exchange and share data has intensified with the need to reduce data duplication. In response to these needs, Tripal version 3 has changed its organizational focus from chado to controlled vocabularies and adopted Drupal Entities. This affords easier integration of non-Chado storage platforms, facilitates implementation of RESTful web services, provides greater search and display functionality and drives more intuitive content creation. Tripal 3 is also designed to require less programming than previous versions when layout customizations are desired.