UTILITY AND FEATURES OF A CUSTOMIZED PC WINDOWS-BASED RELATIONAL DATABASE FOR MANAGING MICROBIAL STRAIN DATA

In addition to storing microbes, culture collections in industry, gove rnment or universities manage a vast and continuously expanding Librar y of information on strain history and properties. An efficient and co st-effective computer database system is required for entering, analyz ing and searching these data. This report describes the utility and fe atures of a comprehensive database which consists of a commercially av ailable relational database system combined with customized screens fo r data entry, viewing and report generation. The application was devel oped using Microsoft access and Visual Basic to operate in the Windows environment on a local area network.