Querying NCBI Entrez database fields using Ruby

Here’s a problem. You’d like to construct a complex query at NCBI Entrez using various fields. Example:

“9606″[Taxonomy ID]

to limit your search to Homo sapiens. Except – you don’t know which fields are available for the database that you want to query.

Baby steps with RSRuby in Rails

Plotting and charting libraries for Ruby (on Rails) abound. However, few are sophisticated enough for scientists and many are not actively maintained. Plotting in R, on the other hand, is about as sophisticated as it comes.

Can we bridge Ruby and R? Yes we can, thanks to Alex Gutteridge’s RSRuby. The next logical question: how to plot data using RSRuby in your shiny new Rails application?
Update Jul 22: recently, the code in this post has stopped working for me (unwanted X windows pop up, stack smashing errors) – so use at your discretion or not at all!

Where next for this blog?

It’s apparent that my activity at this blog has been on a downward-slope for some time. I currently post about once a month and when I do, it’s more likely to be a rant about some social network/web2.0 application than about bioinformatics.

So the question is what to do about it.
Update: thanks for the many, rapid and helpful responses. The unanimous view was – stay here, keep blogging. So that’s what it will be!