Exploring Heterogeneous Molecular Biology Databases in the Context of the Object-Protocol Model

Solutions currently promoted for exploring heterogeneous molecular biology databases (MBDs) include providing Web links between MBDs or constructing MBDs consisting of links, physically integrating MBDs into data warehouses, and accessing MBDs using multidatabase query systems. Arguably the most difficult tasks in exploring heterogeneous MBDs are understanding the semantics of component MBDs and their connections, and specifying and interpreting queries expressed over MBDs. However, most existing solutions address only superficially these problems.