From Shiny App to Enterprise SaaS Solution: Lessons Learned and Necessary Tech Stack

Author(s): Mauro Masiero

Affiliation(s): BigOmics



R/Shiny is one of the quickest ways to create simple user interfaces that allows users to explore and bring bioinformatics tools to a broad range of users. However, most of the Shiny applications are monolithic and run locally, where they are composed of a single folder containing App.R and simple to no deployment structure. While this model facilitates the fast prototyping of UI designs, it severely limits scalability and deployment of a high-end software-as-a-service (SaaS) application. Here we explore the technology stack that brought our Shiny App to an enterprise-grade solution. We list the components that are necessary for a successful deployment, including authentication , data sharing, monitoring, CI/CD, performance optimization, and collaboration across multiple teams. We also cover the modular structure that allows over 18 bioinformatics dashboards and tens of thousands of lines of code to work together and deliver in-depth omics data analytics. Omics Playground is an open source bioinformatics tool developed by BigOmics Analytics. The platform aims to accelerate tertiary analyses, reduce the time bioinformaticians spend on routine tasks, and allow biologists to interact with the data from their experiments and collaborate more efficiently. The source code can be found at https://github.com/bigomics/omicsplayground.