Dr. Murai Éva - Gubányi András szerk.: Parasitologia Hungarica 27. (Budapest, 1994)

ParData: a computer programme for zooparasitological collections András GUBANYI Zoological Department, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Baross u. 13. H-1088, Hungary (Received 22 September, 1994) Abstract: A new computer programme written in the Clarion professional database management language is described. ParData was developed for processing zooparasitological data. The main concept was to develop a code system which can reduce the size of the database files by excluding string variables, and thus increasing the speed of information processing. Registers (auxiliary databases) are used for re-coding. Records are entered with the help of the registers, thus the typing time is greatly reduced. Key words: zooparasitology, computerized database, parasitological collection, code-system, ParData, hierarchical model, relational database INTRODUCTION The possibilities of building a national computerized zoological database have been studied since the mid - 1980's in the Zoological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Preliminary results of this project have been discussed by Lőrinc et al. (1989) and Korsós (1990). As a result of these developments, local databases have been put into use in different collections of the Zoological Department for solving special tasks. These databases have mainly been written in dBase IV, Foxpro 2.0 and Clipper using a dBase file structure. In the framework of the Szigetköz project, a commercial zoological database has also been developed which is available on the network system of SZTAKI. However, the above-mentioned programmes are not suitable for processing zooparasitological data and they do not support parasitological work. Contrary to other invertebrate collections, as well as vertebrate collections, due to the parasitehost relationships the work in the parasitological collections necessitates a double registry system. Registration of recovered parasites based on the collection number of the infected host species, which has a "unique" character, is similar to databases used in vertebrate collections. On the other hand, the collection number has a "non-