Exploring heterogeneous biological databases: Tools and applications

Abstract

We present a tool-based strategy for exploring heterogeneous biological databases in the context of the Object-Protocol Model (OPM). Our strategy involves tools for examining the semantics of biological databases; constructing and maintaining OPM views for biological databases; assembling biological databases into an OPM-based multidatabase system, while documenting database schemas and known links between databases; supporting multidatabase queries via uniform OPM interfaces; and assisting scientists in specifying and interpreting multidatabase queries. We describe these tools and discuss some of their scientific applications.