Iconix finds a cure in AJAX

Data integration is a major challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. The daunting task of analyzing volumes of information that span several databases often stymies companies involved in creating drugs. To address this problem, Iconix Pharmaceuticals developed DrugMatrix, a single-source database of insights collected from across multiple data domains using the disciplines of chemistry and genomics. DrugMatrix is built on a three-tiered architecture consisting of a data warehouse, an application server, and a sophisticated Web UI created using Tibco General Interface, an AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) toolkit.

“We started developing DrugMatrix using AJAX technologies before ever hearing of AJAX,” says senior engineer John Calvin. “In a way I feel like we have helped to push the envelope of what it is that AJAX can do.”

Calvin says the AJAX approach allowed Iconix to develop the DrugMatrix UI in half the time and at one-third the cost of traditional client-server applications.

“The initial development team consisted of five to seven people, two to three of whom were engineers. In six months we were able to design and implement a product that everyone was proud of,” Calvin says. By December 2005, Calvin plans to complete the process of exposing DrugMatrix as a Web service. The result will be a unique tool that integrates more than 200 million drug data points with an unprecedented degree of accessibility.