Glycomics is the comprehensive study of glycomes (the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules of an organism), including genetic, physiologic, pathologic, and other aspects. Glycomics is a subset of the field of glycobiology that aims to identify the structure and function of the complete set of glycans (the glycome) produced in a given cell or organism and identify all the genes that encode glycoproteins. Glycoproteomics determines which sites on each glycoprotein of a cell are glycosylated and ideally includes the identification and quantitation of each glycan structure at each site on the heterogeneous glycoforms in the cell. This complexity makes glycomics and glycoproteomics both exciting and daunting. Because neither the proteome nor the transcriptome can accurately predict such a moving target, the glycome and glycoproteome must be analyzed directly, and the techniques used to characterize the glycome and glycoproteome