This workshop will demonstrate the Beacon API, a data discovery protocol that allows users to determine the presence or absence of a particular allele in a dataset, without disclosing any further data differentiating the individuals it contains.

The ELIXIR Beacons project is a Driver Project of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health that provides a simple way to federate data discoverability. The ELIXIR Beacons protocol can allows any variation data back end to be connected to the ELIXIR Beacons network which can then be queried to ask questions like 'does this dataset have any information about allele 'X' at position 'Y' in the genome?'.

This workshop will show how recent extensions to the Beacon API has extended its functionality by adding support for additional types of genomic variants and improved metadata support.

Additionally we will also demonstrate the accompanying ELIXIR Beacon reference implementation which utilises risk mitigation strategies by integrating the ELIXIR Authorization and Authentication Infrastructure (AAI), demonstrating to data owners how to light Beacons at different tiers of data access: open, registered, or controlled.