title: New Powder Diffraction File (PDF-4) in relational database format: advantages and data-mining capabilities.
abstract: The International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) is responding to the changing needs in powder diffraction and materials analysis by developing the Powder Diffraction File (PDF) in a very flexible relational database (RDB) format. The PDF now contains 136,895 powder diffraction patterns. In this paper, an attempt is made to give an overview of the PDF-4, search/match methods and the advantages of having the PDF-4 in RDB format. Some case studies have been carried out to search for crystallization trends, properties, frequencies of space groups and prototype structures. These studies give a good understanding of the basic structural aspects of classes of compounds present in the database. The present paper also reports data-mining techniques and demonstrates the power of a relational database over the traditional (flat-file) database structures.
authors.affiliation: International Centre for Diffraction Data, 12 Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073-3273, USA.
authors.forename: Soorya N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Kabekkodu
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Faber
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fawcett