Method of operating a plurality of electronic databases

• US 20040049510A1
• Filed: 09/05/2003
• Published: 03/11/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Lion Bioscience AG (2invest AG)
• Original Assignee: Lion Bioscience AG (2invest AG)
• Inventors: Richter, Stefan, Croft, David, Minch, Eric
• Application Number:
  US10/398,803
• Publication Number:
  US 20040049510A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A method of operating a plurality of electronic databases which can be accessed simultaneously by a user, said databases each comprising a search facility for records of the database, is characterized by providing one or more links from at least some data records of a first database to one or more records of at least a second database, performing a search in at least said first database and executing at least one of said links from at least one of the records forming the result of said search.

Claims

1. Method of operating a plurality of electronic databases which can be accessed simultaneously by a user, said databases each comprising a search facility for records of the database,

characterized by providing one or more links from at least some data records of a first database to one or more records of at least a second database,

performing a search in at least said first database,

executing at least one of said links from at least one of the records forming the result of said search, wherein a data record in said second database related to a record in said first database by a link is accessed automatically.

2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that at least one of said links between the two databases is a link created instantaneously.

3. Method according to one of claims 1 or 2, characterized in that on the basis of the result of a first search in one of said databases a search query for another database is automatically generated and said search query is executed to carry out a search in said other database.

4. Method according to claim 3, characterized in that the result of said first search is entered as a search parameter into said search query for said other database.

5. Method according to one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that at least part of the record forming a result of said search in said first database and an output resulting from executing a link from said record to a second database are output simultaneously.

6. Method according to one of claims 4 to 5, characterized in that the search result of related searches in a plurality of databases are combined into one single output.

7. Method according to one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that a user is presented a list of records as a result of the search and upon selection of one or more of these search results by a user a link to another database from said selected search results is automatically executed.

8. Method according to claim 7, characterized in that only such records are output that relate to a link the execution of which was initiated by the presently selected record forming the result of said first search.

9. Method according to one of claims 4 to 8, characterized in that the search result of said other search is used to generate a search query for a third search.

10. Method according to one of claims 1 to 9, characterized in that the search results of a plurality of searches are used to generate one or more search queries for a further search.

11. Method according to one of claims 1 to 10, characterized in that at least two of the databases relate to different subject matter, said subject matter being one of compounds, proteins, genes, taxa, text documents or reaction pathways.

12. Computer system capable of accessing a plurality of databases, each of which comprises a search facility, characterized by means for carrying out the steps of one of the methods according to claims 1 to 11.

13. Computer program performing, when executed on a computer, the following steps:

receiving a search result from a first database,

automatically executing a link from said result to a second database,

14. Computer program according to claim 13, performing, when executed on a computer the following steps:

automatically generating a search query for a second database on the basis of said search result,

initiating a search in said second database according to said search query.

15. Computer readable medium comprising data readable by a computer, said data comprising a program according to claim 13 or 14.