Frozen strain database program?

Model Organism: Worms Methods & Reagents
1

Hello wormbase,

I am wondering if anyone has a good program for storing information on frozen worm inventories that is readily available. I am working on tracking hundreds of frozen strains but the excel spreadsheets are not cutting it anymore. I have not used Microsoft Access before but it looks like it might work, has anyone made a database for access that they would be willing to share? Are there other programs out there? It would also be nice follow a pipeline of freezing progress for new batches of strains as they arrive as well.

Thanks,

Greg

2

Hi Greg,

Filemaker is a straightforward, off-the-shelf database program that we’ve used for strain tracking (and other purposes). Good sorting and searching functions are built-in, and your existing Excel spreadsheets can be imported as comma or tab-separated files. Both MS and Mac versions are available (probably others as well). If you’re Linux-savvy, MySQL is another option, but the learning curve is a bit steeper.

-Harold