  There is a wide range of available biological databases developed by
bioinformatics experts, employing different methods to extract biological data.
In this paper, we investigate and evaluate the performance of some of these
methods in terms of their ability to efficiently access bioinformatics
databases using web-based interfaces. These methods retrieve bioinformatics
information using structured and semi-structured data tools, which are able to
retrieve data from remote database servers. This study distinguishes each of
these approaches and contrasts these tools. We used Sequence Retrieval System
(SRS) and Entrez search tools for structured data, while Perl and BioPerl
search programs were used for semi-structured data to retrieve complex queries
including a combination of text and numeric information. The study concludes
that the use of semi-structured data tools for accessing bioinformatics
databases is a viable alternative to the structured tools, though each method
is shown to have certain inherent advantages and disadvantages.
