Designing and integrating human genome databases with object-oriented technology

Abstract

The lack of a well-designed class hierarchy holds back the development of an object-oriented database (OODB) for genome information. This paper describes the design of a standard class hierarchy for genome information with object-oriented technology and the integration of genome information stored in different database files into an OODB. First, we define the rules for finding objects and creating classes for genome information, which can be put to use building new classes in other fields of biological sciences. Second, we implement more than 80 classes for genome information. Finally, we demonstrate the importance of well-designed classes in the development of an OODB and that of the good graphical user interface.