Maintaining a minimassive database of microdrinking measures

For longitudinal studies of rats’ consumption of ethanol, water, and food, we require manual entry of directly observed measurements, consolidation with computer-collected measurements, quick computation of derived statistics, and the export of selected data for further analysis and graphing. As in a spreadsheet, our solution propagates changes in data values through all computations dependent on them but, as in a relational database, maintains data in discrete disk records indexed by day and cage, in which the format of these records is also described by records stored in the same database. During manual data updates, each day’s data are presented in a spreadsheet-like format but with more control over data entry validity than a spreadsheet typically affords. Experimental integrity is further enhanced by producing printed worksheets for data entry, assignment of rats to treatments, and printed injection instructions directly from such customized data files.