HPH Principles of Biological Databases by L.N. Chavali

This book starts right from the basics with databases and Structured Query Language (SQL). Prior database or SQL knowledge is not necessary, as this book covers everything from database design to creating your first database and understanding how the SQL language is used with databases. You will need to follow its instructions for creating the book’s gene database, as this is used for all the examples in SQL.

The objective of Section I, Chapters 1 to 8 is to understand the basic concepts and practices that can be used during design and development of biological database systems. The course contents put more emphasis on Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) as it is an accepted database standard for biological systems and present it in a more detailed manner. Entity Relation Modeling and schema representation have been covered extensively through a case study along with third form normalization with a case study. At the end of the Chapter 8, Centralized Database approach has been described briefly with an illustration. Most of the biological systems present in today’s word are centralized.

The Chapters 9 to 14 will focus on Structured Query Language, or SQL as it is usually abbreviated. SQL is useful to create the biological database and inserting and extracting biological data. Therefore, going through Chapters 1 to 8 is essential to understand the theory and concepts behind database systems. The SQL examples in Chapters 10 and 11 comply with the modern SQL standards set by organizations such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Standards Organization (ISO). The SQL queries in this chapter are supported by most modern database systems.