Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!news.byu.edu!news.kei.com!hookup!swrinde!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!agate!overload.lbl.gov!acedbfaq From: acedbfaq@s27w007.pswfs.gov (ACEDB FAQ Pseudouser) Newsgroups: bionet.software.acedb,news.answers Subject: ACEDB Genome Database Software FAQ Followup-To: bionet.software.acedb Date: 6 May 1994 17:52:21 GMT Organization: Dendrome, A genome database for forest trees Lines: 906 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Message-ID: <2qe04l$shd@overload.lbl.gov> Reply-To: acedbfaq@s27w007.pswfs.gov NNTP-Posting-Host: s27w007.pswfs.gov Summary: Frequently Asked Questions about finding and getting started with the database system ACEDB. ACEDB is used to collect information regarding the molecular biology of the genome. Archive-name: acedb-faq Last-modified: 5/6/94 Version: 1.11 Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu bionet.software.acedb:219 news.answers:19222 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Common Questions, with Answers, about ACEDB. Q0: What is ACEDB? Q1: What is the current version of ACEDB? Q2: !What hardware/software do I need to run ACEDB? Q3: Where can I get ACEDB? Q4: !What ACEDB databases exist? Q5: What written documentation exists for ACEDB? Q6: Where can I find further information about ACEDB? Q7: How should ACEDB be cited? Q8: Is ACEDB object-oriented? Q9: What's all this about Gopher|WAIS|ftp|WWW|URL ... Q10: How can I get on/off the ACEDB announcements mailing list? Q11: When and where is the next ACEDB Workshop? Q411:Who prepared this document & where is the current version? Questions marked with + are new, those with ! have substantially changed answers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q0: What is ACEDB? A0: ACEDB is an acronym for A Caenorhabditis elegans Database. It can refer to a database and data concerning the nematode C. elegans, or to the database software alone. This document is concerned primarily with the latter meaning. ACEDB is being adapted by many groups to organize molecular biology data about the genomes of diverse species [see Q4]. ACEDB allows for automatic cross-referencing of items during loading and allows for hypertextual navigation of the links using a graphical user interface and mouse. Certain special purpose graphical displays have been integrated into the software. These reflect the needs of molecular biologists in constructing genetic and physical maps of genomes. ACEDB was written and developed by Richard Durbin (MRC LMB Cambridge, England) and Jean Thierry-Mieg (CNRS, Montpellier, France), beginning circa 1990. It is written in the C programming language and uses the X11 windowing system to provide a platform independent graphical user interface. The source code is publicly available [See Q3]. Durbin & Thierry-Mieg continue to develop the system, with contributions from other groups including Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the European integrated Genome Project. A description by Durbin & Thierry-Mieg: ACEDB does not use an underlying relational database schema, but a system we wrote ourselves in which data are stored in objects that belong in classes. This is nevertheless a general database management system using caches, session control, and a powerful query language. Typical objects are clones, genes, alleles, papers, sequences, etc. Each object is stored as a tree, following a hierarchical structure for the class (called the "model"). Maps are derived from data stored in tree objects, but precomputed and stored as tables for efficiency. The system of models allows flexibility and efficiency of storage -missing data are not stored. A major advantage is that the models can be extended and refined without invalidating an existing database. Comments can be added to any node of an object. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q1: What is the current version of ACEDB? A1: As of January 1994, ACEDB has undergone a bifurcation. Those involved with C. elegans will want to to track the 2.x series under the stewardship of Richard Durbin and all other groups should probably track the 3.x series of Jean Thierry-Mieg. Thierry-Mieg writes "... 2 and 3 differ only at the level of displays ..." Version 2.0 was released in December, 1993 and version 3.0 was released in January, 1994. To retrieve the software see Q3. To be kept informed of new releases see Q10. [This question refers to the software not the C. elegans data.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q2: What hardware/software do I need to run ACEDB? A2: Unix and X11: Any machine running SunOS 4.x SPARCstation 10 under Solaris [Probably all Solaris, then --bks] DEC DECstation3100, 5100 etc. DEC Alpha/OSF-1 Silicon Graphics Iris series PC 386/486 with Linux (free Unix) There exist, or have existed, ports onto Alliant, Hewlett- Packard, IBM R6000, Convex. You may have to contact the developer responsible for the port to make these real. NeXT: contact Patrick Phillips at University of Texas, NeXTmail: patrick@wbar.uta.edu email: phil@decster.uta.edu MSDOS/Windows/NT: A port to NT is rumored to be in the works. Macintosh: [Contributed by Frank Eeckman] macace 2.0 is now available from genome.lbl.gov (131.243.224.80) under ftp/pub/macace. Macace is distributed as a self-extracting archive that contains the application, the wspec files, and a fully up to date database. macace 3.0 is available with an updated 21bdb database from the same source. Please send all questions/bug reports to eeckman@llnl.gov A native powerPC version is available as well. Macace needs a macintosh with > 16 MBytes of RAM, and a decent color monitor is preferred. System 7 or greater is required. For the multimedia extensions Quicktime 1.0 is required. Please add your name to our mailing list by sending email to eeckman@llnl.gov. It is our belief that for cost savings a powerPC mac will beat the advertised linux-intel combination. Macace is fully compatible with xace, but includes some multimedia extensions (picture and movie support) not found in the unix versions. For cost savings, a combination of a high-end Intel platform with Linux appears very attractive. Here at the Institute of Forest Genetics we run ACEDB on a Sun Microsystems SPARCstation II, and users can interact using Macintoshes and PC-clones by using X11 implementations for the personal computers and a LAN. [This section should be expanded to have a more thorough discussion of X11 interactions. --bks] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3: Where can I get ACEDB? A3: All the files are available in the following public access accounts (anonymous ftp sites) accessible via Internet: lirmm.lirmm.fr (193.49.104.10) in pub/acedb cele.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk (131.111.84.1) in pub/acedb ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (130.14.20.1) in repository/acedb (version 1-10 is available in repository/aatdb) bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il (132.76.55.12) in pub/databases/acedb. A typical session would be: ftp ncbi.nlm.nih.gov login: anonymous password: your email address cd repository/acedb/ace3 binary ls get README_3 get NOTES get INSTALL get bin.sparc.3.0.tar.Z quit ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q4: What ACEDB databases exist? A4: [In alphabetic order by Database name. Curators, submit changes as new paragraphs.--bks] Database : AAnDB-1.0 Species : Aspergillus nidulans PI : Leland Ellis Last_update : February 1994 ACEDB_version : 3.0 Contact : leland@stralight.tamu.edu URL : http://keck.tamu.edu/ibt.html Comment : defunct, See AGsDB Database : AAtDB Species : Arabidopsis thaliana Availability : Curator : John Morris Current version: 1-5 Contact : curator@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : ABtDB-1.0 Species : Bovine, Bos taurus ACEDB_version : 3.0 extended PI : Leland Ellis Last_update : February 1994 Contact : leland@stralight.tamu.edu URL : http://keck.tamu.edu/ibt.html Comment : defunct, See AGsDB Database : ACeDB Species : Caenorhabditis elegans Current version: 2-9 Curator : Jean Thierry-Mieg Curator : Richard Durbin Contact : rd@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk Contact : mieg@kaa.crbm.cnrs-mop.fr Last_update : March 1994 Database : AceMap Species : Homo Sapiens (Saccaromyces Pombe, Mus musculus in development) Focus : Physical mapping of human chromosomes X and 21 Curator : Hugues Roest Crollius Contact : hrc@gea.lif.icnet.uk PI : Hans Lehrach PI : Hugues Roest Crollius Last_update : 22 Feb 1994 Database : AGhDB Species : Gossipium hirsutum (cotton) PI : Russ Klhel Curator : Stephanie Crouch Last_update : March 1994 Contact : scrouch@tamsun.tamu.edu Database : AGsDB A Genus species Database Species : Aspergillus nidulans Species : Neurospora crassa Species : cow w/ human anchor loci Species : cotton (demo) Species : Homologs of Aspergillus cell cycle loci for budding and fission yeast PI : Leland Ellis Curator : Leland Ellis Last_update : March 1994 ACeDB_version : 3.0 (beta still), with extensions to the Human C21 Models to provide for multiple species, and queries between species via Homologs (e.g., cell cycle loci with links via Homologs between Aspergillus and budding C. cerevisiae) and fission (S. pombe) yeast); interacting loci via defined Interactions for each locus Models : as of 3.13.94 Data : as of 3.13.94 Revision : AAnDB for Aspergillus nidulans and ABtDB for Bos taurus (cow) have been folded into AGsDB, and are not being developed futher as individual species databases. WWW : WWW-AGsDB is an interface of AGsDB with the World-Wide Web, and utilizes the WWW-ACeDB Server (nph-acedb3) of Guy Ducoux (ducoux@moulon.inra.fr). URL : http://keck.tamu.edu/ibt.html Contact : leland@straylight.tamu.edu Database : ASbDB Species : Sorghum bicolor PI : Keith Schertz Curator : Stephanie Crouch Last_update : March 1994 Contact : scrouch@tamsum.tamu.edu Database : ChlamyDB Species : Chlamydomonas PI : Elizabeth Harris Contact : chlamy@acpub.duke.edu Availability : Still under construction Phone : 919-684-5243 (till 6/94) Fax : 919-684-5412 (till 6/94) Last_update : 30 Sept. 1993 Database : EcoDB Species : E. coli PI : Staffan Bergh Contact : staffan@biochem.kth.se Availability : Still under construction Last_update : 11 Oct. 1993 Database : FlyBase Species : Drosophila melanogaster Availability : gopher or gopher+ ftp.bio.indiana.edu Availability : ACeDB-style interface to SyBase server due by end of 1994 Curator : Edward Welbourne Contact : eddy@gen.cam.ac.uk Contact : flybase@morgan.harvard.edu PI : William Gelbart PI : Michael Ashburner PI : Thomas Kaufman PI : Kathy Matthews PI : John Merriam Database : Flydb Species : Drosophila melanogaster Availability : by request only, via ftp Curator : Suzanna E. Lewis Contact : SELewis@lbl.gov Focus : STS content mapping project summary PI : Gerald Rubin PI : Mike Palazzolo PI : Dan Hartl PI : Alan Spradling Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : GrainGenes Species : Wheat, barley, oats, relatives Availability : Anonymous ftp from probe.nalusda.gov:pub/grains Availability : Gopher greengenes.cit.cornell.edu port 70 Availability : Gopher probe.nalusda.gov port 7002 Curator : David E. Matthews PI : Olin D. Anderson Contact : matthews@greengenes.cit.cornell.edu Contact : oandersn@wheat.usda.gov URL : gopher://greengenes.cit.cornell.edu/1/ Data_version : 1.3 Released : 12 Jan 1994 Based_on : acedb.1-10 Availability : See following WWW URL URL : http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/acedbs/acedbs/graingenes/index.html Last_update : Feb. 1994 Database : human.c17 Species : Homo sapiens Availability : the database is under development Contact : lsprilus@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il Focus : mapping & sequencing of Human Chromosome 17 Based_on: acedb.3-0 Last_update : Jan. 1994 Database : Maize Species : Zea mays L. ssp. mays Focus : Maize genome Acedb_version : 1.9 FTP : probe.nalusda.gov, pub directory; anonymous ftp Comment : Maize is an acedb front end for the Maize Genome Database, MaizeDB, a SYBASE database. Comment : MaizeDB is updated daily and has WWW connectivity to external databases: GenBank (loci, alleles and probes), SwissProt (gene products) and the E. coli Stock Center (loci). Data : Major data categories: 4522 mapped loci (located to chromosome or better) including 684 mapped genes and 1423 mapped probed sites (gene candidates); 982 probes; 1850 map scores; 1533 gel patterns (Probe/Enzyme/Stock); 4231 stocks; 5105 Variations (alleles, DNA polymorphisms, rearrangements, etc); 465 phenotypes; 223 traits; 547 gene products; 5314 bibliographic references; 1979 persons with addresses. Gopher : host = teosinte.agron.missouri.edu, port = 70 Telnet : telnet teosinte.agron.missouri.edu login as guest, use password 'corncob' HTTP : http://teosinte.agron.missouri/top.html HTTP : http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/acedbs/index.html via PGD, the Plant Genome Database Comment : Genera is a software toolkit for creating and extracting data from Sybase databases; used to create MaizeDB and Worldwide Web connectivity. HTTP : Genera Info http://cgsc.biology.yale.edu/genera.html Funding : MaizeDB USDA/ARS to E. Coe Funding : Genera NSF BIR 92-01652 to S. Letovsky and M. Berlyn Curator/PI : Ed Coe ed@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Curator : Pat Byrne byrne@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Curator : Georgia Davis gdavis@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Curator : Mary Polacco maryp@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Curator : Marty Sachs, Maize Stock Center, msachs@uiuc.edu Curator : Christiane Fauron FAURON@GENE1.med.utah.edu Curator : Carolyn Wetzel cmwetzel@iastate.edu Curator : Steve Rodermel S1SRR@ISUVAX.IASTATE.EDU Design : Stan Letovsky letovsky-stan@CS.YALE.EDU Design : Mary Berlyn mary@fetalpig.biology.yale.edu Systems Manager : Denis Hancock dhancock@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Contact : db_request@teosinte.agron.missouri.edu Last_update : 25 April 1994 Database : MycDB Species : Mycobacteria Comment : MycDB is a collation of data on the mycobacteria, causative agents of tuberculosis and leprosy. It is centered on the mapping and sequencing projects under way in M.leprae and M.tuberculosis. PI : Staffan Bergh PI : Stewart Cole PI : Doug Smith Curator : Staffan Bergh Contact : staffan@biochem.kth.se Last_update : Apr. 1994 WWW : http://kiev.physchem.kth.se/MycDB.html ftp : ftp.pasteur.fr (157.99.64.12) in pub/MycDB ftp : kiev.physchem.kth.se (130.237.52.64) in pub/MycDB ftp : bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il (132.76.55.12) in pub/databases/mycdb Database : RiceGenes Species : Rice (O. sative) Availability : under development, login at own risk Curator : Edie Paul Contact : epaul@nightshade.cit.cornell.edu Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : SolGenes Coverage: Solanaceae - tomato, potato, pepper (eventually) Availability : Beta ACEDB via login or tar file Curator : Edie Paul Contact : epaul@nightshade.cit.cornell.edu Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : SoyBase Species : Soybeans Curator : Lisa Lorenzen PI : Randy Shoemaker Contact : lorenzen@mendel.agron.iastate.edu Phone : 515-294-0421 Fax : 515-294-2299 Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : TreeGenes Species : Forest trees Availability : alpha, contact curator ACEDB_version : 1-10 Curator : Bradley K. Sherman PI : David B. Neale Contact : Dendrome@s27w007.pswfs.gov Contact : bks@s27w007.pswfs.gov Contact : dbn@s27w007.pswfs.gov Last_update : March 1994 URL : gopher://s27w007.pswfs.gov/ URL : http://s27w007.pswfs.gov/ URL : ftp://probe.nalusda.gov/pub/trees Database : 21Bdb Species : Homo sapiens Availability : by request, via ftp, world-wide-web Based_on : acedb.1-10 plus moulon server URL : ftp://genome.lbl.gov/pub/21Bdb-v1.1.tar.Z URL : http://genome.lbl.gov/Genome/acepage.html Curator : Donn F. Davy Contact : DFDavy@lbl.gov Contact : aggarwal@genome.lbl.gov Focus : STS content mapping & sequencing of Human Chromosome 21 PI : Michael Palazzolo PI : Chris Martin PI : Jan-Fang Cheng Last_update : Apr. 1994 Database : VoxPop Species : Populus spp. Availability : contact curator Curator : Carl G. Riches PI : Reinhard F. Stettler Contact : cgr@poplar1.cfr.washington.edu Contact : STETTLER@coyote.cfr.washington.edu Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : ? PI : Scott Chasalow Species : Potato Contact : Scottish Crop Institute, Dundee Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : ? PI : George Murphy PI : David Flanders Species : Arabidopsis thaliana Contact : John Innes Center, Norwich, England Last_update : Sept. 1993 Database : ? Species : Homo sapiens Focus : Physical mapping of human chromosomes 22 and X Curator : Ian Dunham Contact : idunham@crc.ac.uk id1@sanger.ac.uk PI : Ian Dunham PI : David Bentley Last_update : 28 Sep 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q5: What written documentation exists for ACEDB? A5: From Sam Cartinhour: The ACEDB Documentation Server is a repository for documentation concerned with "A C. elegans Data Base", the generic genome database software designed by Richard Durbin (MRC, UK) and Jean Thierry-Mieg (CNRS, France). The server is intended as a resource for developers, curators, and end-users of all (not just plant) databases derived from ace. Eventually we hope to offer all kinds of documentation, from reprints to (technical) gossip. The ACEDB documentation server is sponsored by the Plant Genome Database Project at the National Agricultural Library (USDA). The documentation server is listed on the home page for the Agricultural Genome World Wide Web Server at http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000. Primary documents from the developers are: acedb -- A C. elegans Database: I. Users' Guide. acedb -- A C. elegans Database: II. Installation Guide. acedb -- A C. elegans Database: III. Configuration Guide. Syntactic Definitions for the ACEDB Data Base Manager --Jean Thierry-Mieg and Richard Durbin (1991-) Get By anonymous ftp from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (130.14.20.1) in repository/acedb: ftp://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/respository/acedb/doc*tar.Z And ftp://weeds.mgh.harvard.edu/acedb_doc The files are in tex and postscript. [I have had some difficulty printing these. Jean Thierry-Mieg suggests latex xxxx.tex, dvi2ps xxxx.dvi > xxxx.ps, lpr xxxx.ps.] You will find interesting documents in the wdoc subdirectory of the ACEDB distribution. Cherry, J.M., Cartinhour, S.W., and Goodman, H.M. (1992) AAtDB, An Arabidopsis thaliana Database. Plant Molecular Biology Reporter 10 (4): 308-309,409-410 Tutorial manual for AAtDB: Cartinhour, S., Cherry, J.M., and Goodman, H.M. (1992) An Introduction to ACeDB: For AAtDB, An Arabidopsis thaliana Database. Massachusetts General Hospital. (Available on request in printed form from the AAtDB curator). A description of ACEDB: Cherry, J.M. and Cartinhour, S.W. (1993) ACEDB, A tool for biological information. in Automated DNA Sequencing and Analysis, edited by M. Adams, C. Fields, and C. Venter. Academic Press (in press). [text is available through ftp or gopher from weeds.mgh.harvard.edu] Another description of ACEDB for physical mapping projects: Dunham, I., Durbin, R., Mieg, J-T & Bentley, D.R. (1993) Physical mapping projects and ACEDB, in Guide to Human Genome Computing. Ed. Bishop, M.J. (Academic Press) (review, in press). [text is available through ftp or gopher from weeds.mgh.harvard.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q6: Where can I find further information about ACEDB? A6: There is a Usenet/Biosci conference titled bionet.software.acedb. If you do not have access to the Biosci conferences via a newsreader (e.g. rn, trn) you can participate in the conference by electronic mail. To subscribe to the e-mail version of the conference send email to biosci-server@net.bio.net (UK, European readers use biosci@uk.ac.daresbury or biosci.daresbury.ac.uk) with no subject line and only the message subscribe ACEDB-SOFT in the body. To unsubscribe send the message unsubscribe ACEDB-SOFT to the same address. This is an automated service. Your e-mail address will be taken from the header of the message that you send. If you then send mail to acedb@net.bio.net the mail will be distributed to all subscribers and to the electronic conference. Mike Cherry has set up an ACEDB Developer's archive. For anonymous ftp use the hostname weeds.mgh.harvard.edu and look in the acedb_dev directory. If you wish to contribute you can put files in the incoming directory. Send a message to Mike (cherry@genome.stanford.edu) that you have put something in that directory then Mike will move it out for general access. For gopher you can connect to weeds.mgh.harvard.edu (132.183.190.21) and ... --> N. FTP Archives for Molecular Biology/ then --> M. ACEDB Developer's archive/ [N and M are integers which are subject to change.] The bionet.software. acedb.conference is archived and can be searched using WAIS. Here is a Gopher-style link to the WAIS archive. (This is also courtesy of Mike Cherry.): # Type=7 Name=ACEDB BioSci Electronic Conference Path=7/.index/acedb-biosci Host=genome-gopher.stanford.edu Port=70 The AAtDB, Soybase, GrainGenes, Mace, and TreeGenes [see Q4] databases regularly submit data to the Plant Genome Database at the National Agricultural Library (NAL). Nal makes this data available via the WWW using an http server with URL: http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/index.html You will also find a selection of models.wrm files (schemata) for the various databases here. You will want to get a "mosaic client" to examine this. Other URL's that readers with mosaic clients might want to examine are: http://moulon.inra.fr/acedb/acedb.html for C. elegans data http://moulon.inra.fr/acedb/mycdb.html for Mycobacterium data http://moulon.inra.fr:8001/acedb/igd.html for an integrated genome database. For information on how these were created see http://moulon.inra.fr/acedb_conf_eng.html http://moulon.inra.fr/acedb_conf.html (en francais) The Genome Computing Group, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has an anonymous ftp service at machine genome.lbl.gov (131.243.224.80) which contains: flydb - LBL's Drosophila Acedb-style database 21bdb - LBL's Human Chromosome 21 Acedb-style database querdb - LBL's query-language extensions to Acedb metadata - LBL's compendium of Acedb database schema variants macace-aatdb-demo.hqx - pre-release Acedb MacIntosh version There is also a repository of contributed software for data conversions and the like. Computer staff for the UC Berkeley Drosophila physical mapping project the LBL Human Chromosome 21 project, and the LBL plant genome projects meet regularly to coordinate their ACEDB extension and development efforts, along with Frank Eeckman, who is working on the Macintosh version of ACEDB (for further information, contact jlmccarthy@lbl.gov). They also keep in close touch (via email, personal visits, etc.) with their counterparts in Cambridge (Richard Durbin et al), Montpellier Jean Thierry-Mieg et al), and the Interated Genome Database project in Heidelburg (Otto Ritter, Detlef Wolf et al). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q7: How should ACEDB be cited? A7: From the distribution: We realize that we have not yet published any "real" paper on ACEDB. We consider however that anonymous ftp servers are a form of publication. We would appreciate if users of ACEDB could quote: Richard Durbin and Jean Thierry Mieg (1991-). A C. elegans Database. Documentation, code and data available from anonymous FTP servers at lirmm.lirmm.fr, cele.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Papers involved in database development could quote more precisely: I. Users' Guide. Included as part of the ACEDB distribution kit, II. Installation Guide. Included as part of the ACEDB distribution III. Configuration Guide. Included as part of the ACEDB distribution and the preprintkit, available by Anonymous FTP from ... Jean Thierry-Mieg and Richard Durbin (1992). Syntactic Definitions for the ACEDB Data Base Manager. Included as part of the ACEDB distribution. --Jean and Richard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q8: Is ACEDB object-oriented? A8: From the ACEDB User's Guide. A major current vogue in computer languages and database design is for ``object-oriented'' systems. It's also a source of lots of argument. We are just trying to build a good system, and don't want to get caught in the crossfire, but we do talk about organising our data into objects and classes. We have undoubtedly been influenced by many of the ideas going around, but it isn't likely our system would be regarded as kosher by the object- oriented community. In particular there is no class hierarchy, nor inheritance, and it is written in a modular but non-ideological way in straight C. However display and disk storage methods are class dependent. In some ways the class hierarchy is replaced by our system of models and trees, which seems to be rather unusual. We think it is very natural for the representation of biological information, where for some members of a class a lot might be known about some aspect, but for most only a little is known. The advantages of our sytem over a relational database, such as Oracle or Sybase, is our ability to refine our descriptions without rebuilding the database and the possibility of organising the storage of data on disk according to their class, i.e. we store in a very different way the tree-objects and the long stretches of DNA sequence. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q9: What's all this about Gopher/WAIS/ftp/WWW ... A9: These terms all refer to Internet protocols. An excellent introduction to the Internet is: _The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog_, by Ed Krol, O'Reilly & Associates, 1992. Or ask your system administrator to provide you with a gopher client or mosaic client and begin navigating on your own. URL is a Universal Resource Locator on the World-Wide Web (WWW). There are many free Internet browsers available that allow you to use an Internet connection and a URL to access services. Mosaic may be the most popular and it is available for Mac, PC or Unix via anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q10: How can I get on/off the ACEDB announcements mailing list? A10: To get on or off the mailing list send mail to rd@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk or mieg@kaa.crbm.cnrs-mop.fr. New releases of the software are announced to this list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q11: When and where is the Next ACEDB Workshop? From Jean Thierry-Mieg: DATES: The acedb '94 workshop will be held july 2 to 16, in Saint Matthieu de Treviers, a small village, 20 km north of Montpellier, at the foot of the Pic Saint Loup. HOUSING: We have booked a place meant for family vacations which includes ample space, a nice conference room and ten studios meant for 5 people (bathroom, shower, kitchenette, terrace, all nice and clean) that we plan to share among 3 to 4 participants. Meals will be taken at a local restaurant. The place is ideal for work and informal discussions and will be well equiped with computers. The situation is nice for hiking and allows volley-ball, ping-pong, tennis and petanque. We can provide lists of possible hotels for those who would prefer more privacy or find ways of accomodating families if you let us know very soon (school ends early july in France). Cost for 2 weeks is 1000 FF (about 200 US dollars) for housing on site plus 2500 FF for full meals. We may get enough funding to reduce this cost, but cannot pay for travel. PROGRAM: Formal presentations and general discussions will take place in the mornings and the evenings, alternating network aspects, data handling, displays and genome data analaysis. The afternoons will be dedicated to data manipulation, programming and writing documentation. The idea is to actually implement during the meeting many of the ideas that will come up, to fuse and coallesce the now numerous acedb-based applications into a working modular package, and to import and consolidate large sets of additional data. Towards this goal, we will broadcast the following announcement ACEDB'94 Genome Database Workshop. Montpellier, July 2-16, 1994 This meeting will cover the use and development of the ACEDB database manager central to several major genome projects, including C.elegans, A.thaliana, human, and a number of other plant and animal species. We wish to encourage people with large sets of data on other organisms to attend this workshop. They will be helped to build, during the meeting, a friendly graphic presentation of their own data, in return for discussing their own experience. ******************************************************************* FORMAT: This meeting will be much longer than the 2 previous acedb workshops (Cambridge 92 and Boston 93), in the hope of initiating new collaborations and allowing concrete results. This format is usual in physics summer schools and often very productive. The workshop may be coupled to a 2 days presentation of acedb, open to the general audience, and yet to be organised. We anticipate at least the participation of people from: Berkeley, Boston, Cambridge, Heidelberg and Montpellier, including Richard Durbin (LMB and Sanger Centre, Cambridge), John McCarthy (LBL, Berkeley), Otto Ritter (DKFZ, Heidelberg), Danielle and Jean Thierry-Mieg (CNRS, Montpellier). Please confirm your participation and forward this announcement to your colleagues. Danielle and Jean Thierry-Mieg CNRS-CRBM BP 5051, 34033 Montpellier, France. email mieg@kaa.crbm.cnrs-mop.fr (if this address fails, fall back on mieg@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Tel: (33) 67 61 33 24 Fax: (33) 67 52 15 59 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q411:Who prepared this document & where is the current version? [Note to international readers: 411 is the phone number for information in the USA. --bks] This document will be posted monthly to the BIOSCI newsgroup bionet.software.acedb and to USENET conference news.answers. It is intended to be used as an index to ACEDB databases and to information about the database software. The latest text version of the ACEDB FAQ should be available via anonymous ftp at machine net.bio.net (134.172.2.69) as file pub/BIOSCI/ACEDB/ACEDB.FAQ or at rtfm.mit.edu (18.70.0.209) as pub/usenet/news.answers/acedb-faq. Answer 3 demonstrates a sample FTP session. If you only have electronic mail, the FAQ can be retrieved from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. There is an HyperText Markup Language (HTML) version of this document available on the World Wide Web: http://probe.nalusda.gov:8000/acedocs/acedbfaq.html http://s27w007.pswfs.gov/Homepage/acedbfaq.html Curators of ACEDB databases should take note of Question 4 and keep me apprised of changes. Errors of commission or omission are unintentional. If I have forgotten to give you credit please let me know. Please send comments and corrections to: acedbfaq@s27w007.pswfs.gov Major contributions in getting this FAQ off the ground were made by John McCarthy and Mike Cherry. Other contributors include: Lisa Lorenzen David Matthews Edie Paul Donn Davy Eric De Mund Sam Cartinhour Please cite as: Sherman, Bradley K. (1994) "ACEDB Genome Database FAQ." Usenet news.answers. Available via Universal Resource Locator ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/acedb-faq To add or modify information in this document, please send mail to: acedbfaq@s27w007.pswfs.gov Bradley K. Sherman Dendrome Project Institute of Forest Genetics P.O. Box 245, Berkeley, CA, 94701 Phone: 510-559-6437 Fax: 510-559-6440 The Dendrome Project and TreeGenes are funded by the USDA ARS Plant Genome Research Program. --bks ---------------------End of file acedb-faq----------------------------