title: Designing XML schemas for bioinformatics.
abstract: Data interchange bioinformatics databases will, in the future, most likely take place using extensible markup language (XML). The document structure will be described by an XML Schema rather than a document type definition (DTD). To ensure flexibility, the XML Schema must incorporate aspects of Object-Oriented Modeling. This impinges on the choice of the data model, which, in turn, is based on the organization of bioinformatics data by biologists. Thus, there is a need for the general bioinformatics community to be aware of the design issues relating to XML Schema. This paper, which is aimed at a general bioinformatics audience, uses examples to describe the differences between a DTD and an XML Schema and indicates how Unified Modeling Language diagrams may be used to incorporate Object-Oriented Modeling in the design of schema.
authors.affiliation: Donaghey College of Information Science and Systems Engineering, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Department of Information Science, 2801 South University Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72204, USA. rebruhn@ualr.edu
authors.forename: Russel Elton
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Bruhn
authors.forename: Philip John
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Burton
mesh_terms: D001709:Biotechnology; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D011381:Programming Languages