Querying Microarray Databases

Microarray technology has rapidly taken a key position among bioinformatics research tools. After the completion of the Human Genome Project, microarray databases have become particularly important to the management and analysis of genomic data. These databases are ideal tools for many research areas involving gene expression patterns under different experimental conditions. This work attempts to assess the querying capabilities of current public microarray database implementations by evaluating their data management, query interfaces, and results presentation. We are not aware of any comparative study available to date that evaluates this important class of biological databases. We examine and evaluate how several of the current existing implementations handle microarray data so that they can be queried and managed in a useful, understandable, and efficient manner. Our study identifies some of the limitations among existing microarray databases that impact querying and results presentation, leading to suggestions for areas of improvement.