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General instructions for Daylight's HTML interface to ACD.

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Introduction

Daylight's HTML interface to ACD is a special-purpose interface to the Available Chemicals Directory. It is designed to deliver essential information quickly and reliably to users who do not need to be chemical information specialists.

This interface is centered around three HTML pages: one which allows the user to specify a query, one which shows what data is available for that query, and one which shows the formatted data. These three pages are described below.

Available Chemicals Directory

This is the initial page of the ACD interface. The published (i.e., supported) entry point is:

/daycgi/acd

Enter any identifier of the desired chemical in the space provided and click on the button marked "Submit". You may enter any name (e.g., ACD name or catalog name), number (e.g., CAS registry number, ACD number or catalog number), or SMILES (generic or isomeric). You may copy an entry from somewhere else and paste it into the entry field (the specific method depends on the HTML browser being used); this is the most common method for entering SMILES from a molecular editor. Most browsers allow you to enter RETURN instead of clicking the Submit button.

ACD thesaurus lookup

Submitting a query from the initial page produces this page, a summary of the results from a Thor lookup in the form of a table. The first column ("Database reference") shows what kind of data was found by the given reference, e.g., "Catalog number: 4444 (MALLINK)" indicates that the given identifier ("4444") was found as a catalog number in the MALLINK catalog. The second and third columns contain depictions of the generic and isomeric structures, as appropriate. The fourth column contains corresponding ACD preferred name(s). Clicking on a picture or name will produce a product table containing all avaliable data for that chemical.

ACD product table

This page displays one or more tables of catalog entries for a generic chemical. Each table contains all the information in the ACD database for a specific structure, e.g., for SEC-BUTYLAMINE, data for each enantiomer and for the mixture appear in separate tables. If there is more than one table, a preferred name index is written at the top of the page allowing you to jump to the desired structure.

The second column of the table contains the supplier "coden" which is a catalog abbreviation, e.g., "SALOR" stands for the "Sigma Aldrich Library of Rare Chemicals Structure Index". The codens are hot -- clicking on any coden brings up a page with the full catalog name, company name, mailing address, phone, telex, and fax numbers.

Other columns include name as it appears in the catalog, grade, purity, cost, specific price ($US/g) and version last updated.

Each table is sorted by specific price, converted to US dollars per gram. e.g., the catalog entry with cost of "4.50 UKL per 250 G" (0.02574 USD/G) would come before one with "21.90 DM per 500 G" (0.02672 USD/G). Currency conversions are made as per date of database release and may not reflect current prices.