

Most of our customer's tend to use MACCS together with one of the three
major RDBMS systems - Oracle, Ingres or Rdb - linked via the MACCS Database
Interface Module. This gives much greater flexibility than trying to place
ALL your data in a MACCS database itself, especially in terms of database
admin., security and data loading/updating.

There is now a trend to move to "open" client-server architectures, a trend
which the ISIS product line now addresses. You can build the same sort of
system with ISIS, placing your structures and structure-related data in a
MACCS database, and your bio data in one of the 3 RDBMS systems, and link
these in a mixed computer/networking environment with much greater
flexibilty and power than is possible in the MACCS environment. The ISIS
end-user interface on the PC/Mac/SGI allows the end-user chemist or
biochemist a much richer environment for report generation, data analysis,
etc.

There is a custom CIMS (Chemical Inventory Management System) application
for MACCS (uses the Database Interface Module to Oracle, Ingres or Rdb),
which is quite widely used and can readily be modified, and two ISIS
chemical inventory systems which have now been built for/by individual
customers.

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