Metaserver

A MetaServer is a central broker providing a collated view (similar to a database view) for dispersed web resources. It is used to collect data from various web services, web pages, databases, or other online resources/repositories and then present the combined results to the client using a standard web protocol (e.g. HTTP with HTML, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC, etc.).

Styles of use

The purpose of such a system is to provide one or several of the following:

  • a unified view on multiple resources
  • easy comparison of the data
  • standardized access to different repositories
  • calibration of the data
  • determining the data consensus

Example MetaServer projects

Typical, widespread implementations of MetaServers are:

  • Meta-Search-Engines
  • DNS MetaServers
  • Protein Structure and Function Prediction Gateways
  • Computer Game MetaServers
  • Text Mining MetaServers (e.g. BioCreative Metaserver - BCMS)
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