The basic organization of the CCDB is illustrated in the schematic below.
The CCDB was designed around the process of reconstruction from 2D micrographs, capturing key steps in the process from experiment to analysis. The CCDB is implemented using Oracle 9i and will soon move to Oracle 10G. The core tables shown in the figure represent the backbone of the CCDB, each of which may be further elaborated in additional tables specialized for a particular technique or data product. By designing the CCDB in this fashion, we can easily add new techniques or features without breaking the structure of the database. While many of the data sets in the current CCDB derive from the nervous system, reflecting our own area of expertise, the schema of the CCDB supports cellular data from any tissue.
The CCDB comprises the following:
- The CCDB Schema
- File management system
- Search and display pages for public data
- Secure portal
- Programmatic Interfaces