What are the obstacles for an integrated system for comprehensive interpretation of cross-platform metabolic profile data?

“Metabolomics can only attend the functional genomic ball if it dresses in similar fine clothes to those worn by other Omics approaches.”(Julian Griffin) The metabolomic researcher’s dream is a software tool that automatically confirms or contradicts a given hypothesis and, additionally, reports a substantial gain of knowledge in grammatically correct sentences together with complete statistical analysis, metabolic pathway graph mappings and literature analysis. Such a fictional integrated workbench or Swiss army knife of data interpretation currently does not exist. However, the building blocks for such a workbench are not far from reality. Over the past 5 years, the Metabolomics Facility...