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Revision with unchanged content. Supporting domain-specific functions and relieving users from the database details are two major challenges faced by many today´s database applications, especially in life science research. The most commonly used workaround is the form-based query interface. However, it has severe limitations on expressive ability, extensibility, and flexibility. Unlike most of previous studies that adopted domain-specific query strategies, this book proposes a conceptual query methodology that can be generally applied in any domain. Meanwhile, it allows data-users to define their own domain-specific query functions. It is independent of database management systems and can be integrated into already-released systems as a complemental query function. This book will be of interest to biologists who are looking for a novel query methodology, to bio-database creators who are developing biological database applications, and to existing database system administrators who would like to provide a complemental query function for end-users.

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PhD: Computer Science at Georgia State University Data manager and analyst at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.

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