1. A computer-implemented method for processing data from an experiment on a collection of materials, the method comprising: receiving data from an experiment on a collection of materials having a plurality of members, the data including one or more values for each of a plurality of the members; associating the received data with a representation of the experiment, the representation including data defining an experiment object having a plurality of properties derived from the experiment, the experiment object being associated with the collection of materials, the representation also including data defining one or more element objects, each element object being associated with one or more members of the collection of materials, the associating including associating the data values with the element objects associated with the corresponding members; parsing the representation to map data from the representation to one or more tables in a relational database; and storing the data from the representation in the relational database according to the mapping, wherein the method is implemented by a computer system comprising a processor configured to execute the method.