Growing your own microscopy client/server image database requires addressing many issues. If you are going to grow your own, the following ideas will get you “out of the box.”

The ideal microscopy image database environment might appear like this: The core of the image database would be a very powerful, universally available, extensible, cost effective, flexible and serviceable database engine. The core engine would allow the user to perform fast and seamless SQL searches across a large database without reducing the available network bandwidth. It would be able to take advantage of current and future technologies (i.e., 64 bit processing, 1 GB networks, digital, video, multi media, etc.) The same core would be able to share information with other databases, applications and platforms. What an odd concept.