The C₂M project: a wrapper generator for chemistry and biology

Modern science relies on the availability of resources accessible over the web. Each resourceuses its own format, among other things because science is highly dynamic and tasks changefrequently. In other words, format multiplicity is a fact of life. Data interoperability relies onthe presence of wrappers. The C₂M project aims to build a system that supports quick andeasy generation of lightweight wrappers by providing a language in which formats can bespecified. Because the project was originally aimed at chemical applications, the name “C₂M" is a chemical formula-like abbreviation of “chemical configurable middleware". For reasonsof exposition, we will be looking at a simple chemical format in this paper. C₂M can besuccesfully applied in other domains as well. The C₂M language has been designed to be easyto learn and use, yet it is sufficiently formal to allow unambiguous description of formats.There is a provision for including documentation, and in fact specification writers areencouraged to do so copiously. Underlying the design of the C₂M language is the intuitionthat there is such a thing as language ergonomics.