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7.1 years ago
scchess
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640
I work in a small lab. Although small, we still have many samples (100+) for RNA-Seq, whole-genome sequencing etc. We have been using an Excel file to track our samples, such as:
- Who sequenced?
- What technology?
- What's the sequencing depth?
- File name
- ... and anything related to the sample ...
Excel file is hard to manage. We are looking for a better alternative.
Q: What would be a better solution? Any management software? We don't have a computer engineer in the lab, so maintaining a database is out-of-question.
see also : Is there a Lims that doesn't suck?
Not all databases are hard, if you spent some time with it you'll probably get the hang of it.
FileMaker is pretty straightforward. It's a tiny bit expensive though - ~$500
You can do simple as well as sophisticated databases on FileMaker Pro. As a database expert, it's a piece of software that has both frustrated and awed me. That said, it is super friendly to the end user and exposes a lot of programmability once you get used to it.