Seeking to cross the bridge between overview, theory, and practice, this book incorporates both methodological approaches and their potential application in the domains associated with biomedical informatics. The multi-contributor book is useful for (1) those coming from a domain seeking biomedical informatics approaches for addressing specific needs; and, (2) current biomedical informaticians seeking a foundational background for methods that might be utilized in practical scenarios germane to their on-going research. A unique characteristic of the text will thus be the balance between foundational coverage of core topics in biomedical informatics with practical "in-the-trenches" scenarios. Contributors represent a 'who's who' of the biomedical informatics field: individuals who have demonstrated effective use of methodology in real-world high quality data applications Thematically organized according to the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) framework, formalizing structure and greatly assisting reader comprehension Contain a number of detailed appendices that function as primers on key topics: (1) XML; (2) Unix skills; (3) Writing Ruby scripts; (4) Developing MySQL databases (5) Interacting with Web services such as NCBI E-utilities