Issues in the development of complex scientific databases

Researchers in genetics, molecular biology, neurobiology, ecology and other biological disciplines are generating enormous quantities of data which need to be managed and made available to the scientific community. The database needs of these communities can provide a forcing function for the development of more flexible, complex, and user-friendly database technologies. This paper uses a database of genetic information as a case study to illustrate some of the types of requirements that can occur in scientific databases, some ways of satisfying those requirements, and some ways that current software engineering approaches and commercial technologies fall short of the needs of this user community. We discuss directions for future improvement in database technology and describe Genera, a high-level database tool we are building to address some of these needs.<>