I have set up a dedicated mySQL database system for the Hulke Lab. It will allow us to much more easily access nursery, field phenotyping trial, and genomic data sets to conduct model fitting.
MySQL (Structured Query Language) is the most widely used opensource relational database management system (RDBMS). The first version of mySQL appeared in 1995, and Oracle operates it since 2010. MySQL is a fast, reliable, safe database system, and it works on many different platforms, such as Linux, Windows, OS.
I recently set up the community version of mySQL server on our Ubuntu workstation and imported all the nursery and field phenotypic and genomic data collected thus far (back to 2008). In addition, I have set up client connections to the mySQL server for other lab members from Windows/Linux platforms via mySQL workbench. This relational database system not only allows us to store, share and update the lab data, but also provides us easy access to the phenotypic data and genomic data via other data analysis software such as R and SAS, to generate models in the genomic selection.