Integrated access to heterogeneous data from NCBI

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) was created by Congress in 1988 to provide a stable government entity with a leadership role in coping with the information issues associated with this field. The NCBI Software Toolkit permits software tools to be developed in a heterogeneous environment. The use of abstract syntax notation (ASN.I) allows one to specify and exchange data across systems, and to reach biologists in whatever system they choose to work. However, the relevant data are still accumulated by different groups with different data models, different quality standards, in different subject domains, and with different time courses. NCBI has designed a data model to define a number of key data elements for molecular biology, including bibliographic data, nucleic acid sequence, protein sequence, genetic and physical maps, and the information about them. The model was constructed in as much detail as possible to accommodate the data contained in the heterogeneous sources, while still maintaining a common model