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CIFLIB [1] is a class library that was developed by the
Nucleic Acid Database (NDB) Project [2]
to provide an application interface to Crystallographic Information
File (CIF) [3,4,5,6] data.
CIFLIB is designed to completely encapulsate all I/O operations and integrity
checking on CIF dictionaries and data files from a calling application.
CIFLIB performs the following functions:
- reads and writes CIF format data files and dictionaries.
- provides read and write access for individual data items.
- performs detailed integrity checks on CIF data and dictionaries
as defined by the Dictionary Description Language
(DDL) 2.1 [7,8,9,10].
- provides utility methods for navigating a CIF schema
- provides a stable callable interface in C, C++ and FORTRAN.
Figure 1 illustrates how this software library facilitates using CIF
as an interchange format in the automated data processing scheme used
by the NDB. As the figure illustrates, CIFLIB provides complete access
to the DDL, CIF dictionaries and CIF data files. This library can be used to
build wrappers and filters around existing applications which need to access
CIF data. Because CIFLIB provides complete access to the dictionary
schema, the library can be conveniently used as an in-memory database
or as a loader for an external database.
This is the first in a series of documents that will present the
features of CIFLIB. In this document, the C language application
interface [11] for CIFLIB is described.
Figure 1:
Functional diagram of CIFLIB
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Next: C Language Interface Description
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Olivera Tosic
6/17/2002