ChemNews.Com VOL 6 NO 3
ChemOffice WebServer: the Newest Web Technology
Bruce R. Gelin, Ph.D
In the articles in this and past issues of the CS Catalyst, we
see how the wealth of WWW chemical information is attracting an
ever-growing user community. But what if:
-your company doesn't permit free-range grazing outside corporate
firewalls,
-your information is confidential, and you need to keep it within
your workgroup,
-you want to organize project data now without waiting for your
systems support group to set up the databases and queries you need.
Enter the ChemOffice WebServer for instant workgroup productivity.
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ChemOffice:
* most user friendly
* Web relational data
* most cost effective
-Candace Apple |
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With the ChemOffice WebServer, your desktop PC becomes a WWW information
server. Your colleagues access it with their browsers plus the ChemDraw
and Chem3D Plugins-the package supports 5 users. First you design
ChemFinder forms for viewing and searching, and you link them to
ChemFinder or other ODBC-compliant databases. You save the forms
and the databases together in a folder. Then the ChemOffice WebServer's
Wizard turns your forms into WWW pages that your colleagues use
to view the databases.
Info Access at a ChemDraw Price
The ChemOffice WebServer is easy on the pocketbook, too: you can
outfit a 5-user workgroup for about $500 per user (commercial list
price) or $250 per user (academic list price). In other words, each
user gets true chemical information access at the low ChemDraw Std
price.
What information can you serve up with the ChemOffice WebServer?
Well, it comes equipped with the four valuable databases of ChemInfo
Ultra (see Catalyst 5.4, page 19), plus the new ChemACX Ultra including
the complete catalogs of Sigma Aldrich, Fisher/Acros, Lancaster,
TCI America, and others (see table). You can also develop
your own project-specific databases.
-A medicinal chemistry group could create a ChemFinder database
of drug candidates, with information about them from the toxicology,
pharmacology, and other departments.
-A customer service group could put its product information on-line-physical
properties, MSDS, Certificates of Analysis, and more-by imitating
the ChemInfo database structures.
Share Data from Many Sources
What about databases from information providers? Begin your shopping
by consulting Jerald Baronofsky's article on page 16 of this issue.
Recently the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), responding
to requests from a group of major chemical, pharmaceutical, and
biotechnology companies, announced the availability of its enormous
reaction database for ChemOffice users. The 360,000 reactions of
ISI's Current Chemical Reactions (CCR) database in ChemFinder format
will provide an extensive, structure-searchable collection of important
chemical reactions.
Business productivity in the chemical "office" is evolving just
as it did in other kinds of offices. The first step was equipping
chemists with ChemOffice to provide them the information tools they
need for their everyday work. Next, the individual desktops gained
the ability to link with each other and with corporate databases.
Now, with the ChemOffice WebServer, project groups have the authoring
and distribution tools they need for information sharing and instant
workgroup productivity.
ChemACX
Ultra: 250,000 Chemical Products
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