Building a Comprehensive Chemical Supplier Catalogue - Technical Challenges
Craig James Modgraph Consultants Ltd
ABSTRACT
A catalogue that combines data from dozens or hundreds of chemical
suppliers falls somewhere between a traditional cheminformatics
system and a "full-strength" chemical registry system. Registry
issues such as normalization of chemistry (charge, salts, chirality,
etc.) must be solved, and database-schema design issues, such as the
parent / version / sample hierarchy of a registration system, must be
considered. However, many of the most difficult issues from a
registration system, such as auditing, security and managing
amendments, are not required or are greatly simplified. In addition,
two other important elements are required: An effective loader that
can handle the wide variety of data provided by suppliers on CD or
the Internet, and a graphical user interface suitable for end users
to search the database, create reagent lists, and generate purchase
orders.
We will discuss the Modgraph Chemical Supplier Catalogue system and
each of these three core elements: The database schema, the loader
system, and the Rene web-based GUI.
Daylight Chemical Information Systems, Inc.