Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Scientific Databases

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 180 Accesses

Definition

Scientific data refers to data that arise from scientific experiments, instruments, analytical tools, and computations. A chemistry experiment, for example, can yield data about the experimental setup, the pressure and temperature conditions under which the experiment was set up, measured variable like the heat released, initial and final masses the ingredients and products of the experiment, and so forth. The output of an instrument like a radio-telescope, after running signal processing algorithms, will produce “images” of the radio-frequency sources in a part of the sky that the telescope was looking at. A biologist, after obtaining the image of a dye-filled nerve cell, uses image analysis software to produce a set of measurements that reflect the structure of the cell and its subparts. Recently, environmental sensors are cast in oceans and send real-time data on ocean temperature, salinity, oxygen content and other parameters. A scientific database refers to an...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 2,500.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Birss E.W., Jones S.E., Ries D.R., and Yeh J.W. Scientific data base management at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory: needs and a prototype system. Technical Report UCRL-80146;CONF-771062–1, Lawrence Livermore Lab, California University, 1977.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Coughran E. HYDROSEARCH, an easy-to-use retrieval system for hydrographic station data. OCEANS, 7:418–421, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Demir E., Babur O., Dogrusoz U., Gursoy A., Nisanci G., Cetin-Atalay R., and Ozturk M. PATIKA: an integrated visual environment for collaborative construction and analysis of cellular pathways. Bioinformatics, 18(7):996–1003, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Gosink L., Shalf J., Stockinger K., Wu K., and Bethel W. HDF5-FastQuery: accelerating complex queries on HDF datasets using fast bitmap indices. In Proc. 18th Int. Conf. on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, 2006, pp. 149–158.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Ikeda H. and Naito M. Evaluation of a combinatorial file organization scheme of order one. In Proc Study on Scientific Database Management Systems, 1979, pp. 195–199 (in Japanese).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Nikitin A., Egorov S., Daraselia N., and Mazo I. Pathway studio – the analysis and navigation of molecular networks. Bioinformatics, 19(16):2155–7, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Olle T.W. The Codasyl Approach to Data Base Management. Wiley, Chichester, UK, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Rotem D., Stockinger K., and Wu K. Minimizing I/O costs of multi-dimensional queries with bitmap indices. In Proc. 18th Int. Conf. on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, 2006, pp. 33–44.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Shannon P., Markiel A., Ozier O., Baliga N.S., Wang J.T., Ramage D., Amin N., Schwikowski B., and Ideker T. Cytoscape: a software environment for integrated models of biomolecular interaction networks. Genome Res., 13(11):2498–2504, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Shoshani A., Olken F., and Wong H.K.T. Characteristics of scientific databases. In Proc. 10th Int. Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, 1984, pp. 147–160.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Shoshani A. and Wong H.K.T. Statistical and scientific database issues. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng., 11(10):1040–1047, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Zhang X., Kurc T., Saltz J., and Parthasarathy S. Design and analysis of a multi-dimensional data sampling service for large scale data analysis applications. In Proc. 20th Int. Parallel and Distributed Processing Symp., 2006.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Amarnath Gupta

Authors
  1. Amarnath Gupta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Gupta, A. (2009). Scientific Databases. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1275

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation