A profile for molecular biology databases and information resources.
This paper examines the requirements for building database management systems and multi-database information resources to support molecular biology research. The paper profiles the most important features of 16 integrated resources and 102 databases related to molecular biology research. The aspects surveyed in this paper include the nature of information in these databases, their sizes, update properties, cross-references, database management system heterogeneity, geographical distribution, data quality, use of temporal information and level of interpretation. The paper also comments on the access patterns to these databases. Since not all these aspects were available for all databases, specific comparisons sometimes compare fewer than the full 102 databases. Consequently, the same set of databases is not necessarily always being compared with respect to every aspect. The paper is organized primarily according to these comparison aspects and ends with some concluding remarks.
Kamel
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Database Systems Research and Development Center, Computer and Information Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611.
D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000592:standards; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000592:standards; D007256:Information Systems / Q000592:standards*; D008967:Molecular Biology