Science and engineering databases in an open-source software world

Storing and organizing scientific and engineering information is a natural application for databases. But database designs and systems have conventionally been driven by the business-application market, especially by large businesses. The authors introduce a hybrid open source/proprietary approach to creating a dynamic Web site for modest laboratory or academic use. Although they cannot claim our solution was optimal, they are convinced that this approach - attending to the back end, as well as the front - assumes a very worthwhile posture for scientific and engineering database applications.