You may attend all three of the classes in this series, or any combination. Classes are free, but you must sign up.

An application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for accessing resources programmatically. A good API provides the building blocks that allow a programmer or researcher to easily develop workflow routines. Major biological resources such as NCBI and EBI provide APIs as an alternative to the traditional web-based query system. Larger companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are implementing user friendly APIs to assist in the creation of Mashups, wherein two or more existing resources are combined into a new user-defined application. This class will cover APIs, Mashups, and URL building through the Yahoo Pipes interface.

Perl is a general-purpose programming language. It was originally developed for text manipulation and is now used for a wide range of tasks, particularly in bioinformatics and biological research. Relatively simple to learn, Perl provides a means to set up complex workflows for biological research. This class will introduce the basic variable syntax of Perl, specifically scalars, arrays, and hashes, as well as routines for file handling and manipulation.

Control structures provide a means to control the flow of a particular programming process. In this class we will learn about if, while, for, and foreach control structures. Although we will be learning theses in the Perl syntax, these control structures are found in every programming language. We will integrate what we previously learned about Perl variables and file handles and will look at simple examples of biological Perl scripts.