XEMBL: distributing EMBL data in XML format

Summary: Data in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database is traditionally available in a flat file format that has a number of known shortcomings. With XML rapidly emerging as a standard data exchange format that can address some problems of flat file formats by defining data structure and syntax, there is now a demand to distribute EMBL data in an XML format. XEMBL is a service tool that employs CORBA servers to access EMBL data, and distributes the data in XML format via a number of mechanisms. Availability: Use of the XEMBL service is free of charge at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/xembl/, and can be accessed via web forms, CGI, and a SOAP-enabled service.