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This dissertation describes LABNET, a loosely-coupled network of small computers for laboratory automation and data collection. The network comprises two parts: RAPNET, the local-network operating-system-like software, and Real-time MICRODARE, an interactive language for programming automation and data-collection tasks. RAPNET provides the framework upon which application-level programs like MICRODARE execute. In addition to the usual file services and other miscellaneous system services normally supplied by a single-CPU operating system, RAPNET provides link-level message facilities, program control, and a virtual channel system. There is a means for coordinated application-level program intercommunication, the pseudo-link; pseudo-links are the means by which programs running in different CPUs or in the same CPU may be connected. To the application-level program, a pseudo-link looks just like a file or device. Real-time MICRODARE supplies an interactive programming capability which uses the facilities of RAPNET to enable a programmer to do distributed program systems for automation, simulation, and data collection. MICRODARE consists of an interactive BASIC-like job-control language, and a compiled fast-task language. The job-control language permits time and event dependent scheduling of automation and data-collection program segments. The fast-task language does simulation, signal-processing, data-collection, and control tasks at close-to-assembly-language speeds.

With the use of the Internet and the emerging of e-commerce, new and improved technologies and modeling techniques have been used to design and implement web-based database management systems.

The necessity for a functional user friendly laboratory data management program has become evident as the quantity of information required for modern scientific research has increased to to titanic proportions. The required union of strong computer power, ease of operation, and adaptability have until recently been outside the realm of most research laboratories. Previous systems, in addition to their high cost, are necessarily complex and require software experts in order to effect any changes that the end user might deem necessary. This study examines the Apple Macintosh computer program Hypercard as an interactive laboratory information system that is user-friendly, cost effective, and adaptable to the changing demands within a modern molecular or microbiology.