A monolithic software system is being replaced with a modular design. And all of this has been accompanied with exponential growth in the amount of data being managed. Despite these changes, GDB's fundamental design and basic data model still reflect their history, tracing back through HGML to word-processing files. The challenge now is to redesign GDB's data model and its systems so that they look to the future, not the past. As more data become available from various organisms, we can imagine the end-game of the HGP and begin designing a system to accommodate what will be found, not what has been found.
Users interact with the managers to extract information from the system.
Now, with support for publication on demand, GDB allows users to interact with the database to identify information of interest. As HGP findings accumulate, some fundamental genetic ideas seem to derive as much from the methods of classical genetic analysis as from the underlying biology. If our information-management systems cannot accommodate new findings, they will fail.