On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 19:19 -0700, Nathan Boley wrote:
Is an association, for example, an experiment that establishes a
dependent relationship? So could there be multiple associations
between variant and phenotype?
Exactly. You might have one group say that allele X "causes" some trait, whereas another group might report a more precise increase in odds ratio (for example) for the same genotype/phenotype.
Is your concern that the number of joins will grow exponentially in
the number of variants and phenotypes?
Not the number of joins, but the number of association subclasses. If I have Nv variant subclasses and Np phenotype subclasses, I'd need Nv * Np association subclasses. Multiply that by the number of association subclasses.
So all variants would be stored in the variants table, all phenotypes are in
the phenotypes table, and you join through association.
Thanks. I had considered that too and that's probably what I'll end up using.
-Reece