[BioSQL-l] Authority in biodatabase table

[Peter]

Thank's for all the replies on the db_xref issue.

Today I'd like to ask if there are any established guidelines for the
biodatabase table - in particular for how to use the "authority" field
in the biodatabase table, and if there is any agreed terminology for
the named "sub databases" defined therein i.e. what should I call them
in our documentation.

By default, unless the user specifies an authority, we end up with a
NULL when creating entries in the biodatabase table using Biopython.
For example:

from BioSQL import BioSeqDatabase
server = BioSeqDatabase.open_database(driver="MySQLdb", user="root",
                     passwd = "", host = "localhost", db="bioseqdb")
db = server.new_database("orchids", description="Just for testing")
server.adaptor.commit()

I'd like to give some sensible defaults in any worked examples.  Apart
from simple test cases (like above), sensible examples that came to
mind would be creating a "sub database" to contain:
(*) an entire GenBank release
(*) the latest SwissProt release

What would you use in these cases.  In fact, what does your
biodatabase table contain right now?

Thank you all,

Peter