VChemLab: A virtual chemistry laboratory. The storage, retrieval, and display of chemical information using standard Internet tools

The design and implementation of two interactive Internet-based applications for the storage, retrieval, and display of molecular structures, spectra, and physicochemical properties is described. The first, suitable for small-scale laboratory or teaching applications, uses a JavaScript-controlled structure to load data from discrete files located on a server ora CD-ROM into a local Web browser. The second, developed for scaling to larger commercial-sized applications, uses a Java-based Distributed Object Computing architecture to allow a local client applet to have persistent access to a remote object database, in which information for the different chemical classes has been stored. Both browser applications have a dynamically created page structure and use readily available Plugins and Java applets for the; active display of three-dimensional molecular structures and their experimental spectra.