HYDRA can be used to query multiple distributed sources of data as a single database. Moreover, the data sources may be completely heterogeneous and include regular relational DB, online DBs, nomenclatures, ontologies, unstructured data such as scientific publication, Web services and various analytical programs. Practically any data that can be processed programmatically may be integrated with other resources. This unprecedented power of integration is achieved by wrapping the data sources as SADI Semantic Web services and orchestrating them in the engine to answer SPARQL queries.

Published HYDRA case studies:

• Interpreting ecotoxicology experiment data by discovering related information in multiple public databases.
• Semantic querying of a hospital datawarehouse to support hospital-acquired infections surveillance.

Prior SADI case studies conducted with HYDRA’s predecessor – SHARE:

• Integrating text-mining results with external DBs and visualisation algorithms.
• Integrating programs for structural analysis of small molecules with programs for ontology-based classification of molecules.