Java and JavaBeans for Cheminformatics

The usability of standard HTML pages for the display of inherently often very graphical chemical information is severely limited, especially with respect to interactive manipulation of the displayed data. This is where simple images, the lowest common denominator, fail. There is a definite need for a portable and flexible mechanism for the graphical display and manipulation of chemical information in a WWW context. We believe that Java, especially the JavaBeans framework, which supplies a powerful paradigm for the communication between multiple processing tools, is a very suitable technology to solve these problems. In this contribution, we illustrate the design and use of the ChemSymphony JavaBean suite as an example of this technology