Flow diagram illustrating the iterative process used to derive and refine protein fingerprints. Rounded boxes denote programs, square boxes indicate the results of running those programs, and ellipses indicate user decisions. With the continued growth of the database, however, maintenance was becoming inefficient and error-prone. Adopting such a system reduces redundancy, maintains consistency and facilitates routine maintenance. Each entity has a relationship with another, as represented by a connecting arrow.
Ellipses represent specific entity attributes.
To date, there have been 23 major and five minor releases. A complete contents list is available from the distribution sites and from the Web site. The principal obstacle to the frequency of expansions, and particularly of updates, is the time-consuming nature of the approach. However, although we have achieved regular major releases, the full database had not been updated for 3 years. Such queries are made possible by calls to the underlying query language, SQL, the syntax of which is hidden from the user beneath the Web interface.