Biological Databanks: Distribution, Heterogeneity, Diversity and Provenance

Advances in molecular biology and hardware technology, such as micro-arrays has made available a tremendous amount of data for biological scientists .In the first part of our paper we highlight the semistructured characteristics and complex nature of biological data and the substantial challenges it poses in data management. In the second part of this paper we stress the need for identifying examples in nonbiological areas which pose issues and challenges similar to biological data. The solutions proposed by computer scientists for these problems can lead to solutions to similar problems in biological databases. We give two examples, The Junk Yard and the Movie Crew to show how real world non-biological problems can help identify and solve biological database issues and problems.