The development of widely-available computers, growing each year more powerful and less expensive, has helped make genetics an information science. This computer revolution, beginning 40 years ago, also offered many scientists an alternative career. Since about 1988 I have been developing software to support aspects of mouse genetics. The Map Manager programs supported mapping of Mendelian and quantitative trait loci with mouse crosses and recombinant inbred lines. They offered a graphical user interface, unusual at that time for scientific software. As the potential of the Web became apparent, Rob Williams and I developed WebQTL, which brought this type of analysis online. A few years later, an international consortium started the Collaborative Cross (CC) to produce a set of recombinant inbred mouse lines with more genetic diversity. Breeding began in Israel, Australia, and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US. As breeding began, I began writing software, now called CCDB, to guide and document the development of the ORNL lines. During inbreeding of these lines, we discovered that a program for display of human pedigrees, CraneFoot, could be adapted for mouse pedigrees. As some lines approached inbred status, I wrote two database programs: (1) RXDB to document production of RIX hybrid lines from CC inbreds, and (2) BOTA to maintain records of tissue and DNA samples from many stages of breeding. The most recent project, now replacing CCDB and RXDB, is BOBS, a program to guide and document the production and distribution of CC lines and RIX hybrids to the mouse genetics community. The database programs for CC have had two goals: first, to ensure accurate data entry, secure storage and flexible information retrieval; second, to minimize data entry time by adapting data entry to laboratory and mouseroom procedures.