>In article <16359 at news.duke.edu>, glh at bio3.acpub.duke.edu (Geoff Hughes) writes:
> Here are a few questions that I have:
>> How is query useful in an X environment?
>> Geoff Hughes
The query() function call, for those who are familiar with the source code, is one of
the essential methods for sorting and manipulating data in the database.
But, to address your question, I must admit to being puzzled by it. The fact that
the external environment is X Windows does not necessarily have much to do with
the query system inside ACEDB.
If, perhaps, you mean that with BOLD text, you can hyper-browse and move your
windows around (in X), yes that is possible.
But by using carefully (and not so carefully (1)) constructed queries, you can
easily construct useful data keysets of objects which interest you. For example,
you could get all the papers written by Jean Thierry-Mieg in the year 1992 or,
as another example, all the people who work at LBL and who have written exactly
three papers which were accepted into a journal.
Of course, these examples are rather useless and probably not at all applicable
to the type of data in most genome databases, but I hope it gives you
an idea of the potential that lies within the query system.
(1) Having talked to Jean Thierry-Mieg recently, I was told that in most common
cases, using the general text search box (on the main window of ACEDB)
is faster than using a rather complex query command due to the order of
evaluation of the general text search which can reduce the searched
dataset faster than a complex and very specific query.
I hope this helps
Gary Aochi
ghaochi at lbl.gov
