Bioinformatics Vol. 17 no. 8 2001
Pages 729-737
© 2001 Oxford University Press
The Bioinformatics Template Library—generic components for biocomputing
1 School of Crystallography, Birkbeck
College, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK
2 Bioinformatics Applications Group, UK MRC
HGMP Resource Centre, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SB, UK
Received on December 22, 2000
; revised on March 23, 2001
; accepted on March 28, 2001
Motivation: The efficiency of bioinformatics programmers can be greatly increased through the provision of ready-made software components that can be rapidly combined, with additional bespoke components where necessary, to create finished programs. The new standard for C++ includes an efficient and easy to use library of generic algorithms and data-structures, designed to facilitate low-level component programming. The extension of this library to include functionality that is specifically useful in compute-intensive tasks in bioinformatics and molecular modelling could provide an effective standard for the design of reusable software components within the biocomputing community.
Results: A novel application of generic programming techniques in the form of a library of C++ components called the Bioinformatics Template Library (BTL) is presented. This library will facilitate the rapid development of efficient programs by providing efficient code for many algorithms and data-structures that are commonly used in biocomputing, in a generic form that allows them to be flexibly combined with application specific object-oriented class libraries.
Availability: The BTL is available free of charge from our web site http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/~classlib/ and the EMBL file server http://www.embl-ebi.ac.uk/FTP/index.html
Contact: d.moss{at}mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk; m.williams{at}biochemistry.ucl.ac.uk
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
3 Present address: Celltech Chiroscience, Granta Park, Great Abingdon, Cambridge CB1 6GS, UK.
4 Present address: Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
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