Figure 1

High level schematic of ProteinTracker components. ProteinTracker is a web application developed using the Echo3 open-source Ajax client–server framework that runs within a Java Servlet container. The presentation-tier consists of HTML and JavaScript rendered by server-side components. The logic-tier handles application logic including data management and validation, authentication, managing application errors and performing calculations. Data, with the exception of QC image files and DNA construct maps, are stored in a PostgreSQL relational database (data-tier). The open-source Hibernate Object Relational Management (ORM) library maps application data in the logic-tier to relational data in the data-tier.