Caprion Enables Protein Analysis
Montreal-based Caprion Pharmaceuticals is a privately held drug-discovery company applying proteomics to discover and develop innovative products for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Through the creation of a specialized data center, Caprion is accelerating the detection of disease-related proteins. The Caprion data center represents one of the largest and fastest dedicated protein-analysis server banks in the world; it has the ability to process multiple terabytes of information per year.

High-Level Project Goals

•	Expose information in easy to access Web interfaces
•	Scalable solution that can handle terabytes of data
•	Standard based development

Why Oracle?
Oracle offered a complete and integrated solution to Caprion's needs including a scalable deployment platform with Oracle9i Database and Application Server, and a highly productive development environment with Oracle9i JDeveloper and Oracle9i SCM.

Complete Java Environment
Caprion uses Oracle9i JDeveloper to build a Java based system that manages the access to the Protein database through Web interfaces. The user interfaces were built using Oracle9i JDeveloper's frameworks BC4J and UIX. "Oracle9i JDeveloper goes beyond your standard Java tool and includes productivity boosting frameworks that reduced our development time. The framework simplified the binding of business logic components to the user interface layer, and included built-in J2EE design patterns." says Bernard Gagnon, Director of Information Technology at Caprion. "We deploy our Java components on Oracle9i Application Server for best performance. If we see any problems we use remote debugging from Oracle9i JDeveloper."

Integrated Development Environment
In addition to Java and SQL development Caprion uses XML for messaging between various parts of the application and for dynamic creation of HTML and Excel outputs. "Oracle9i JDeveloper gave us the perfect combination of Java, XML and SQL in a single development environment.". To manage team development Caprion uses Oracle9i SCM. "The integration of Oracle9i SCM into JDeveloper's IDE simplifies our team work and help us avoid accidental overwrites".

Managing Terabytes
Caprion manages a huge database processing multiple terabytes of information each year. Oracle9i Warehouse Builder enables Caprion to manage the huge amounts of data transportation and transformation. "Our database is basically one huge centralized knowledge base for pharmaceutical development. Oracle9i Warehouse Builder is a scalable and robust solution that is able to handle these massive amount of data."

Future Plans
With the completion of a rough draft of the human genetic code, pharmaceutical researchers, such as Caprion, are launching large-scale efforts in proteomics. These studies are expected to lead advances in treating complex diseases, such as cancer.