This message is being cross-posted to CHMINF-L, CHEMIND-L, and CHEMWEB. Please reply to me directly unless you think your response might be of value to others on the list. If desired, I can summarize the responses. I have recently started a new position and I am trying to come up to speed quickly on chemical structure searching. I am not necessarily interested in searching any one system (STN, DIALOG, etc.). What I am interested in is being able to pull together bits of disparate information from a variety of sources in such a way that they can be related to other pieces of information. I apologize for not being more precise, but to be honest, I am pretty new at this and all I know about the information is that some of it is textual and some is graphic. What standards exist regarding graphics packages? Are these compatible with standard graphics formats (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.)? If a propietary system, how widely used is it? Can the graphics be linked to data in database systems that are SQL or ODBC compliant? In other words, can they be imported into or have links created from Oracle databases (relational) or Lotus Notes databases (non-relational)? Do they allow OLE, or can they be packaged as objects? In either case, could structure searching be conducted within the Oracle or Notes database, or would it have to be done within the originating application? Or, perhaps more appropriately, does this list (whichever one you are reading this on) have a searchable archive? Or can someone provide me with citations for authoritative journal articles, texts, or Web sites regarding standards for management of graphics and databases? Much obliged, Randall Brinkhuis Environmental Protection Specialist U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brinkhuis.randall@epamail.epa.gov ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)