The field of genetics has advanced rapidly in recent years and will continue to do so. The progress of genetic research requires massive amounts of data to be collected, stored and processed. Because of this, much biological research is now reliant on computer science and the intersection of the two fields, known as bioinfonnatics. To some extent the advance of genetic research is limited by the computational resources available.

The computational requirements of specific genetic research operations as they relate to data summary, distribution and presentation can be met by a single software application. An intuitive, web based, database interface, known as a 'datamart' is one promising, unified means of addressing these issues. This thesis will describe the principles and applications of bioinfonnatic datamarts and illustrate an example of successful datamart development and deployment.