MRIDIR—A System for Integrating Research Databases

Abstract

Lederle's Medical Research Integrated Database Information Retrieval (MRIDIR) system provides timely and facile access to a growing body of computerized, in-house data relating to pharmaceutical discovery and development. It was created in response to a proliferation of special-purpose programs, each dealing with a specific dataset and each with its own query syntax. Written in FORTRAN and interfacing to the System-1022 Database Management System, MRIDIR provides relational links between these datasets and, from the user's viewpoint, integrates them into a single database with a simple query language. A special dataset called the “data dictionary” describes these linkages, and alterations to the database structure (eg, addition of new datasets) are smoothly accomplished through changes to the data dictionary.