Lesson 12 - The native ACEDB interface

ACEDB

What you have seen and used throughout this tutorial is a WWW interface to databases managed by the ACEDB database system. ACEDB is a public domain software package, developed by Richard Durbin and Jean Thierry Mieg, with additional input from a number of others. It runs on UNIX (including Linux), Windows 95/NT and Macintosh systems. You can download the ACEDB software from several different sites. You can download the files for your favorite AGIS database also. If you follow the About link after any of the databases, there should be a link to ftp archives. It is up to the database curators to make these files available. Some databases may supply only the database files, some may include the entire distribution (including the ACEDB software itself), some may have more than one operating system available. Some may have updates every day, some every quarter. In short, there is no general rule about what may be there. If you are interested in installing ACEDB on your own computer, you should probably review some of the ACEDB documentation, particularly the installation guide. After that you should contact the curator for any specific instructions or guidance.

Differences between ACEDB and the WWW interface

For the most part, the WWW interface provides identical funtionality as the native ACEDB interface, although with a different look. There are some places, however, where the interfaces are noticably different. Genetic maps may have different "views" defined for them, so you can customize how the display looks (for example, only show QTLs for yield, or for disease resistance). The graphical displays (such as genetic maps and sequences) sport a number of features that are available only through the native ACEDB. The graphical displays can scroll horizontally, and can be recentered by dragging the locator bar. Interacting with the graphics is much easier as well, since there is not a long delay after each click of the mouse. In addition, ACEDB lets you quickly find all the "neighbors" of an object (i.e. anything that the object references) and all the bibliographic references of an object. You can have many windows of information open simultaneously, making it easier to review the information trail. You can also do things like subtract one keyset of objects from another, or add them. Keysets can be used to highlight objects on a display.

If you think that you will be making heavy use of a particular database, or if certain of the graphical displays are especially useful to you, you should probably consider installing the database locally, if possible.

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