Databases provide a powerful method to organize, efficiently search, and relate data sets.

In this series of three lessons, learn to effectively manage your experimental results by developing, implementing, and querying custom relational database systems.

• Slides [slide show] [to print]
• Exercise 1
• Exercise 1 solutions

• Slides: [slide show] [to print]
• Exercise 2
• Exercise 2 solutions

• Slides: [slide show] [to print]
• Exercise 3
• Exercise 3 solutions

Other information about databases and MySQL      

• Schema Diagram
• db4bio database - brief table descriptions
• MySQL 3.23, 4.0, 4.1 Reference Manual
• MySQL Tutorial
• MySQL Basics -- A Helpful MySQL Tutorial

Sources of data tables and/or SQL to build your own MySQL database      

• SQL tables from Ensembl: follow FTP links for "MySQL" (bottom table)
• MySQL tables from Ensembl Mart: includes table creation SQL and other files with data by species
• Connecting to MySQL interface of Ensembl: try "mysql -u anonymous -h ensembldb.ensembl.org -P 3306" to get to all Ensembl data
• SQL tables from UCSC Bioinformatics: select a species and go to "Annotation database" to get a list of tables "*.txt.gz" and corresponding table creation SQL (*.sql)
• Gene Ontology SQL database: represents all GO data in a relational database for download
• NCBI Entrez Gene data files: but you need to design a database for them
• MySQL database dumps from UBC Bioinformatics: Entrez Gene, NCBI Taxonomy, NCBI HomoloGene, etc.