[Pipet Devel] Loci and data storage

[Gary Van Domselaar]

Locians,

During my visit to Boston, Jeff and i talked quite a bit about Loci and
how, at its core, it will essentially be framework for data management and
data processing. This led me to thinking about how Loci will store data. 
I dont think this aspect of the loci core has been very thoroughly
addressed.  Does anyone have any ideas on how we might implement data
storage for Loci?  I'm no database expert, so I'm a little hesitant to
suggest how we should go about it, but it does seem important to me that
loci should be able to store analysis results in a relational database
(Informax's VectorNTI uses a relational database to store its data). This 
would facilitate the construction of customized, sharable databases.  In 
keeping with Loci's philosophy of not adopting specific data formats, it 
seems to me that Loci should probably not adopt a single database, but 
rather have the capability to interface with any of the popular 
databases, such as oracle, sql, mysql, etc.  PHP has this capability, and 
is one of the biggest reasons why it is so successful.  

What do y'all think? 


Regards,

--gary
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Gary Van Domselaar		gvd at redpoll.pharmacy.ualberta.ca
Faculty of Pharmacy 		Phone: (780) 492-4493
University of Alberta		FAX:   (780) 492-5305
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada