To achieve this, a DBMS needs to help ecological scientists do science. Business has had more influence over the design, development and implementation of DBMS than any other source. Most commercial data base management theory and software is directed specifically at business solutions, seldom applicable to scientific applications. These solutions do not physically or logically meet the needs of the ecological research community.
Programs are in a language already known and in use, in a familiar computational environment.
Certain areas of the directory structure are used for data entry, manipulation, and construction of the archive files. Once complete the files are transferred to the archive area. The archive file then becomes the reference version of the data. The flow of data to and from the archive data files. Computerization of data from paper data forms, or data entry, is achieved by the use of text editors, and data entry programs.