The system can be used with any type of data and comes with a range of query interfaces and administration tools, including 'out of the box' website that can be installed, configured and customised according to requirements. The system simplifies the task of creation and maintenance of advanced query interfaces backed by a relational database and it is particularly suited for providing the 'data mining' like searches of complex descriptive (e.g. biological) data. BioMart can work with existing data repositories by converting them to a required BioMart format as well as newly created databases.
BioMart has built-in support for query optimization, which makes it particularly useful when working with large data repositories storing high throughput experiment data such as genomic sequence or microarray experiments. The system can also be used with small datasets typical of the 'wet lab' environment because it only requires a minimal support.
BioMart architecture makes possible to cross-query multiple datasets distributed across the internet, removing the need to integrate and store data locally. BioMart data can be accessed using
either web, graphical, or text based applications, or programatically using web services or software libraries written in Perl and Java. Currently supported RDBMS platforms are MySQL, Oracle and Postgres.
BioMart is completely Open Source, licensed under the LGPL, and freely available to anyone without restrictions
