SoS Notebook: an interactive multi-language data analysis environment

MOTIVATION: Complex bioinformatic data analysis workflows involving multiple scripts in different languages can be difficult to consolidate, share and reproduce. An environment that streamlines the entire processes of data collection, analysis, visualization and reporting of such multi-language analyses is currently lacking. RESULTS: We developed Script of Scripts (SoS) Notebook, a web-based notebook environment that allows the use of multiple scripting language in a single notebook, with data flowing freely within and across languages. SoS Notebook enables researchers to perform sophisticated bioinformatic analysis using the most suitable tools for different parts of the workflow, without the limitations of a particular language or complications of cross-language communications. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: SoS Notebook is hosted at http://vatlab.github.io/SoS/ and is distributed under a BSD license.