Lims to CDS interface

[bob]

Hello Is anyone using the LAbtronics bidirectional interface software to link their LIMS and their CDS . If so what CDS and LIMS are you using and what convinced you to use LABTRONICS.

[Tim]

Hi Bob (Not Robert Pavlis, President of Labtronics, I hope ),

We have two versions of LIMSLink. The first is between Agilent ChemStation Plus (v. A.09.01/B.02.01) and Applied Biosystems SQL*LIMS. THis was installed in March 2003 and was used till the end of last year when we migrated to Agilent Cerity. We now have an interface between Cerity (A.02.01SR2) and AB SQL*LIMS v 4.0. Other sites within the company have installed LIMSLink between Waters Millennium and AB SQL*LIMS.

With the latest version (LIMSLink-CDS 3.2), we did an evaluation against several other vendors. The only one that came close to having a product with functionality that met out requirements was the CSols product. We eventually went with Labtronics because of previous experience with the product and because the latest version would integrate into Cerity.

The previous version (ChemStation-SQL*LIMS) was heavily custom coded and didn't use much of the default functionality in LIMSLink. However, that showed the power of the product, because so long as you have someone that can code in Visual Basic, you can custom code LIMSLink as much or as little as you want.

The current version we are using has been used off-the-shelf, with no custom coding at all. It integrates well with Cerity and even better with Millennium (using the toolkit). Biggest limitation that has been fedback from the labs is the number of batches they can get into one sequence (6-7). That is partly because of the way we configured the SQL queries in LIMSLink - if we'd written the SQL queries in a different way, we could probably get more.

The result-return side of the product is good too. The custom coded version has a direct database link into the ChemStore database. The version for Cerity uses flat-files. That was the hardest part of the process - getting reports in a format that LIMSLink could split and parse that data out of. Actually configuring LIMSLink to split and parse the reports was quite easy.

One of the other benefits that convinced us to use LIMSLink was that it can be used to interface with other Lab equipment - balances, UVs, KF, etc. That is a future project, but the functionality is there out of the box.

Final benefit, though we don't use it, is the Special Functions toolkit that is available for LIMSLink. Adds on additional functionality (including the Visual Basic scripting engine) that mean LIMSLink can perform additional processing on the data before it gets sent to LIMS. That means you can eliminate Excel spreadsheets - data automatically goes into LIMSLink, gets processed and automatically sent out to LIMS.

We estimated that the interface saved us an average 100,000 manual data entries per year over the past two years.

Final point was with Labtronics themselves. They are a good crowd to work with and the application experts really know the product well. On occasion we felt they over-estimated what LIMSLink was capable of, especially with the Cerity version, but eventually worked round the problems.

That's probably more information than you asked for, but if you need any other info, please ask!

Tim

[bob]

javascript:emoticon(':D')
Very Happy
No not that BOB!

Thank you very much for all the information.. It is encouraging to see that you upgraded and stayed with LIMSLink .I have many vendors as an instrument profile and was thinking of using LIMSLink between the CDS and Labware. I presently have 3 CDS in use-- Chromeleon;Chemstation and Turbochrom so I want to reduce these down to at most two. The Cerity is something I would consider for new Agilent purchases. Do you know of anyone who has had experiences with the Chromeleon running the Agilent hardware. I ask this because Chromeleon is a lot more user friendly.
Thanks again.
bob

[Tim]

I just checked the manual and it says LIMSLink can interface with all three CDS you mention. I don't know to what degree it integrates with the CDS for sequence creation - the ChemStation version was launched as a separate application but placed the sequence directly in a offline session, the Cerity version is fully embedded - launched from a menu option.It also says LIMSLink "has been used to interface to all the major LIMS as well as a variety of custom designed LIMS developed on different database platforms". I don't know much about Labware, but it appears to support ODBC, which LIMSLink can use, so I assume they have an interface to it too.

Oh - a word of advice on the LIMS side. Have all the data that comes from one run in the CDS go to one location in LIMS, i.e. don't have separate peaks posted in separate locations, and keep the naming in LIMS and CDS the same or very similar. The more differences in the naming and more widespread the data, the more time you have to spend configuring LIMSLink to work out where to get the data from to create the sequence and where to send the data back to afterwards.

Best bet - get a demo from them. They're based in Guelph which I believe is just up/down the road from you in Toronto, so you should be able to get them onsite.

Tim

[unmgvar]

Hello Bob,

I participated in a conference from Dionex regarding chromeleon, in Munich last october.
present there were many pharma and none pharma companies using Chromeleon in order to connect their Agilent systems.
i don't think that i can give the names right now, but the companies were top pharmas. they generally chose their instruments to connect to all instruments (GC HPLC) when possible.
best thing is to contact Dionex. I know at least teo companies that might permit you to visit them.
i agree with you about it being the most flexible and easy to use of the CDS you mentionned. i would not recommend to go for Cerity. not fexible enough for most users, and anyway Agilent bought EZChrom in order to provide software solutions in the future so don't even go that way.

[bob]

javascript:emoticon(':)')
Smile

Thank you to Tim and unmgvar I will check out dionex ansd labtronics for possibilities.. I will let you know how it goes .