Exploratory Research and Development for use of the Server- Client Paradigm in Geographically Distributed Biological Databases

伊利诺伊大学国家超级计算应用中心将在拉里·斯马尔博士的指导下与冷泉港实验室的计算分子生物学小组在托马斯·马尔博士的指导下建立合作关系。这项合作将展示如何应用先进的计算技术和软件工具来解决分子生物学中的各种问题。将立即关注将程序界面和用户界面构建到地理上分布的生物数据库中。该程序和用户界面将为查询、检索和分析位于不同地理位置的计算机上的数据提供统一的环境。具体地说，该项目将涉及建立一个基于Macintosh的前端系统，以允许相对不熟悉计算机的科学家以交互方式访问新的关系版本的GenBank的完整信息内容，该版本运行在通过T-1互联网连接可访问的远程服务器上。此外，还将调查使用面向对象的数据库技术管理基因组数据的可行性。

A collaboration will be established between the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, under the direction of Dr. Larry Smarr, and Computational Molecular Biology Group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Marr. This collaboration will demonstrate how advanced computing technology and software tools can be applied to solve a variety of problems in molecular biology. Immediate attention will be directed to building a program interface and a user interface into geographically distributed biological databases. The program and user interfaces will provide a unified environment for query, retrieval, and analysis of data residing on geographically separated computers. Specifically, the project will involve building a Macintosh-based front end system to permit relatively computer-naive scientists interactive access into the full information content of the new, relational version of GenBank, running on a remotely located server accessible over a T-1 internet connection. In addition, investigations will be made into the feasibility of using object- oriented database technology for managing genomic data.