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NIF Interoperation Capabilities

What is DISCO?

DISCO is an information integration approach designed to facilitate interoperation among Internet resources. It consists of a set of tools and services that allows resource providers who maintain information to share it with automated systems such as NIF. NIF is then able to “harvest” the information and keep those sets of information up-to-date.

How is this accomplished?

By using a series of files and/or scripts which are then placed in the root directory of the resource developer’s resource. (NIF can also host the files on its servers and crawl for changes there.) Once the files of the resource providers are in place, and DISCO is notified, the DISCO server can then recognize and "consume" the information shared, providing machine understandable information to NIF Integrator Servers (also known as Aggregators) about your resource.

What can DISCO do for my resource?

Create a Resource Description (Sitemap) video icon

This DISCO capability keeps your NIF Registry description up-to-date and informs search engines about your resource. Many formats can be ingested, such as the native "disco.rd", the NIF "disco.rd.nif.rdf" and the National Center for Biomedical Computing's Biositemap formats.

Steps to Create a DISCO Resource Description (Sitemap) File

I. Register Your Resource

II. Generate DISCO Resource Description (Sitemap) file

  1. Once the resource is curated (within 7 days), search for your resource in NeuroLex, click on your resource's link, and then create an account / login (upper right).  

    2. login example
  2. Below the main information (surrounded by a box), you will see the, "Are you the owner of this resource?" section. If you are indeed the resource owner, click on the "Click here to generate sitemap" link.
    3. resource owner
  3. Follow steps 1 - 4 to complete the process. If you add your Technical Contact information, step 2 will be generated on the following page.

You may edit or append these files at any time from the DISCO Dashboard. Just click on your resource's name and then the [Edit] button. Alternatively, you may go through the process above again and simply replace your old files with the new ones.


Create an Interop File to share your data through NIF's Data Federation

The Data Federation provides the ability to drill down into individual databases and data sets and return relevant content. This type of content, part of the so-called "hidden web," is typically not indexed by existing web search engines. NIF will work with your resource in its current form using tools to integrate it as thoroughly as we can with little to no hassle on your part. The process is quite easy and you won't have to change anything to participate. We work with the following types of resources:

  • Database with query API
  • Database with web service
  • Database dump
  • XML data
  • Structured web pages without API (e.g., HTML)
  • Unstructured data files in several formats (Excel, PDF, etc.)
  • RDF

Web Interoperation: This DISCO capability provides information necessary to systematically extract portions of data in semi-structured web resources.

Database Schema: This capability provides information on your database's schema and identifies the specific fields in the database to be shared.

Integration of your data with NIF's federated data is made possible by placing a copy of the information you provide in central NIF Mediator servers - or indexing your database or web service directly. Federated data can then be searched by NIF queries and presented to NIF users with links back to the originating site for additional information.

Find out the Benefits of Data Federation




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Create a LinkOut File

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has implemented a capability called "LinkOut" that allows users of NCBI Entrez (who might for example be looking at an article in PubMed) to link to related information in resources external to the NCBI.

Entrez LinkOut: This DISCO capability provides a mechanism to collect resource's data links related to Entrez objects and forward them to NCBI. NCBI users will find these links when using the Entrez LinkOut feature.

To implement this capability, a resource's developer must provide LinkOut data in DISCO format. There are three ways to generate this information:

  • Using the LinkOut's data generation tool. This tool allows the data to be entered into an Excel spreadsheet and then automatically converted to DISCO files. Instructions are provided in the tool's help page. The latest version of this tool can be downloaded here.
  • Generating LinkOut files by hand or by programs: Please follow the instructions found in this page.
  • Implementing DISCO Web Interoperation with data that includes LinkOut information. For resources registered with DISCO Web Interoperation (NIF level 2.5 integration), NIF developers may be able to create data views to extract LinkOut data for that resource.

For Frequently Asked Questions or Help about Entrez LinkOut, consult the LinkOut Help page.


+ Advertise your terminology or ontological information.

Terminology: This capability facilitates semantic data integration with the resource. A list of terms used by the resource (with mappings to standardized terms) is defined for use by NIF central servers. Without this functionality term mappings have to be made manually by a resource curator or knowledge integrator.

DISCO terminology allows free use of any format (XML, RDF, OWL, etc) to provide mapping between terms and meta/data elements in a resource.

Check the DISCO dashboard Terminology summary page for current resource examples of these formats.

Please contact the NIF interoperability team for more information.


+ Share your resource's news with the NIF community.

News: Coordinates reporting of important changes in the resource to interested users through RSS feeds. This can also be done through the RSS wiki page.

Newsfeeds are traditionally represented in RSS and atom formats. DISCO provides a mechanism to refer to news in a resource using the main DISCO file. View the SenseLab news.

Also, see the DISCO dashboard News summary page for current examples of these formats.

Please contact the NIF interoperability team for more information.




DISCO Dashboard

The Dashboard is the place for resource owners interoperating with NIF to manage their resource. This includes editing or appending files and setting the crawl frequency.  Additionally, the dashboard provides general information about the resource such as the status of the resource (parsed), where the DISCO files are stored (locally at NIF or remotely at site), and which services each resource is participating in. Clicking on a particular service, e.g., Resource Description, retrieves a summary of participating resources.

More on Registering a Resource to NIF




For more information about DISCO or NIF Interoperation in general, please contact the NIF interoperability team.

Go to the DISCO DASHBOARD

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





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