1 research outputs found
An extensible web interface for databases and its application to storing biochemical data
This paper presents a generic web-based database interface implemented in
Prolog. We discuss the advantages of the implementation platform and
demonstrate the system's applicability in providing access to integrated
biochemical data. Our system exploits two libraries of SWI-Prolog to create a
schema-transparent interface within a relational setting. As is expected in
declarative programming, the interface was written with minimal programming
effort due to the high level of the language and its suitability to the task.
We highlight two of Prolog's features that are well suited to the task at hand:
term representation of structured documents and relational nature of Prolog
which facilitates transparent integration of relational databases. Although we
developed the system for accessing in-house biochemical and genomic data the
interface is generic and provides a number of extensible features. We describe
some of these features with references to our research databases. Finally we
outline an in-house library that facilitates interaction between Prolog and the
R statistical package. We describe how it has been employed in the present
context to store output from statistical analysis on to the database.Comment: Online proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Implementation of
Constraint Logic Programming Systems and Logic-based Methods in Programming
Environments (CICLOPS-WLPE 2010), Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K., July 15, 201