Object-relational databases: the next wave in pharmaceutical data management

Ontogen Corporation and Daylight Chemical Information Systems have recently integrated a molecule data type in an object-relational database managemen t system. The authors explain how this innovation unites chemical and biolo gical data management into a single universal database. All chemical inform ation storage, searching and retrieval is performed using a standard struct ured query language. The authors describe using rapid application developme nt methods for quickly building an application to access the database and t hey demonstrate that these techniques can simplify and standardize the mana gment of pharmaceutical data.