STATUS AND FUTURE-DEVELOPMENTS OF REACTION DATABASES AND ONLINE RETRIEVAL-SYSTEMS

In this paper the status of reaction databases and online reaction retrieval capabilities are outlined. The major sources of online reaction information are the CA and Registry Files from Chemical Abstracts, together with the Beilstein Database of organic chemistry. Since none of these files is a true reaction database, the search capabilities are rather limited. CASREACT provides an extension to these files with more systematic indexing of reactions. Today, the online hosts do not provide much support of reaction retrieval. Several features which are essential for a reaction data service are discussed in this paper. A support of stereochemistry, a reaction site searching, a multistep reaction retrieval, and the search for similar reactions are the major features to be developed. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.