Newsgroups: comp.archives
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!emv
From: Cherry@Frodo.MGH.Harvard.EDU (J. Michael Cherry)
Subject: [bionet.molbio.genbank] Re: A question for FTP users
Message-ID: <1991Jan29.050939.21592@ox.com>
Followup-To: bionet.molbio.genbank
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: Cherry@Frodo.MGH.Harvard.EDU (J. Michael Cherry)
Organization: Molecular Biology, Mass. General Hospital
References: <CMM.0.88.664670183.kristoff@genbank.bio.net> <5464@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 1991 05:09:39 GMT
Approved: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
X-Original-Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank

Archive-name: bionet/molbio/geninfo-backbone/1991-01-25
Archive-directory: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:/toolbox/asn_0.5/ [130.14.20.1]
Original-posting-by: Cherry@Frodo.MGH.Harvard.EDU (J. Michael Cherry)
Original-subject: Re: A question for FTP users
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <CMM.0.88.664670183.kristoff@genbank.bio.net> 
kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) writes:
> The people at NCBI will be running the next GenBank contract
> and have it in their charter to develop standards.  I would hope that
> they would comment on these issues.  NCBI has already held developers
> meetings on their proposed ASN.1 standard which I hope people are
> anticipating.  

Please forgive my nitnicking that follows but I'd hate to see things get 
more confused. This is not directed to Dave's posting I just quoted it
so you would see were things start.

The NCBI proposed database standard is built using a transaction/notation
standard called ASN.1. ASN.1 has been adopted by several commercial computer 
and software companies for a variety of applications. ASN.1 is not the name 
of the NCBI standard. I believe the NCBI refers to the database format by the 
name of their nascent database - GenInfo Backbone. You can retrieve a copy of
the the GenInfo Backbone format version 0.5 via anonymous ftp from 
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Look in the toolbox/asn_0.5 directory.

[Additional text deleted. --Ed]

Mike Cherry
cherry@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu
Department of Molecular Biology
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
617-726-5955