ChemStation "Component Summary" report?

[Karen01]

In Empower you can create Reporting methods and put a configurable standard table on the report and set the table to do a "Component Summary"

What that means is you can include any Sequence fields and injection fields (such as sample name, injection number, date aquired etc - you chose from a list) and then the last columns are automatically analyte results for that injection sorted by any field. (It can also so stats on a per analyte basis fro the table, but in this case I'm not doing that) It gets the analyte names from the results and they are not hard coded into the report, which makes it reusable for different assays with no changes.

A simple example of a "Component Summary" table could be some thing like:

Code: Select all

|                                      |                   Amount             |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Vial | SampleName |   Date Aquired   | Compound 1 | Compound 2 | Compound 3 |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   1  |  Sample 1    |12/3/10 8:00AM  |   36.12    |    12.74   |   10.15    |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   2  |  Sample 2    |12/3/10 8:30AM  |   16.12    |    18.71   |   16.23    |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   3  |  Sample 3    |12/3/10 9:00AM  |   11.12    |    22.57   |   13.96    |

I'm running an HPLC assay for 5 analytes with samples from multiple projects with different sample results going to different people and the samples can come in in any order during the day. Sometimes they are on the same sequence, but if a run ends some of the samples could be on a separate sequence started a bit later in the day.

In Empower I process the sequence (or sequences or just select all the injections I care about) which produces results. Then I select subsets of the results i want to include in an individual report and use that report method to generate the individual reports to go to separate people... it all takes seconds. This type of report is convenient to give people in-process results and later quickly select all their results to print a summary of the results for their whole study which may go across several days or even weeks. (I can export the data that way if I want as well)

Can I generate a report with a component summary table like that in ChemStation?

If so can I do it on a subset of a sequence and/or selected injections across sequences?

If so how?

Thanks,
- Karen

[varossf]

Hi Karen. Upgrade your existing ChemStation environment with OpenLAB ECM and Intelligent Reporter and you are capable of doing what you just described.

[Karen01]

Hi Karen. Upgrade your existing ChemStation environment with OpenLAB ECM and Intelligent Reporter and you are capable of doing what you just described.

From what I've seen so far i think OpenLAB ECM is only for use on a server and not meant for use with one or two standalone ChemStations (which is all I need) and is likely is too expensive to use for that. Standalone Empower workstations have this capability built in as basic functionality which is why I was looking for it in ChemStation.

It looks like if I want that, I'll have to use macros to export the data and write an app to put the data into a database and handle that type of reporting myself.

Since you work for Agilent, maybe you can answer a few question about it's macro capabilities.

First I would be working with Unique File Creation On

Can a Macro launch an external app (exe)?

Assuming ChemStation is running and the macro is loaded, can an external app run a macro in ChemStation? If so how?

Can a macro read the Clipboard to get text it can parse?

Can a Macro, given a list of data file paths (gotten from the clipboard or a file) from different Sequences, load them so they can be overlaid?

Thanks,
- Karen

[varossf]

http://www.waleson.eu/
I am not a macro programmer or specialist, but Niels Waleson is. You can contact him on his web site .

[Jackus]

...
Can a Macro launch an external app (exe)? ...

- Karen

Hi Karen01

try this as example:

ExecNoWait "Attrib drive\path\filename +R"

Instead of Attrib you can specify your .exe program.
Regards

[varossf]

Karen,

if you upgrade the ChemStation version to C01.01, aka OpenLAB CDS ChemStation, you will have the Intelligent Reporter as part of the new software package and will be quite capable in doing these type of reporting without macro programming.

Good luck with your decision!

[mbicking]

There is a macro available that will automatically export selected data to Excel. It has some limitations, but it does the transfer without much difficulty, once it is loaded.

I can send it to you. Just send me a private message.

[Karen01]

There is a macro available that will automatically export selected data to Excel. It has some limitations, but it does the transfer without much difficulty, once it is loaded.

I can send it to you. Just send me a private message.

Thank you very much, but I don't need it any more...

I wrote my own program with a decent user interface...

In Chemstation I set up a report with a chromatogram that had had all the relevant data/Info in a both easy to read and easy to parse format and has Chemstation "print" it to PDF and text files.

The program I wrote find the text files, extracts the data across sequences (you can chose the sequences and/or individual injects to look in).

It then presents you with a summery report (one line/injection) in a live scrollable listbox on the screen to quickly see results. Double clicking on an injection brings up the PDF for quick review of all the details.

You can sort on or hide any column by clicking or dragging as well chose to show a subset of analytes to report using checkboxes or reorder the analyte columns by drag and drop.

You then select which injection to summarize (selecting none is the same as selecting all) and push a button.

That lets you chose from a list whom to mail that subset of results. The program then creates a folder, copies the PDF files from the data folders to that folder so you don't have to go find and aggregate them yourself, renames them using the sample name (the unique names Chemstation produces for the PDF files are meaningless to customers), creates a printable pretty summary as well as tab delimited text file summary that can be opened by excel.

The program optionally then zips the folder with all of that, automatically emails the ziped file or contents of the folder if any recipients were chosen and then optionally deletes the folder and zip file to clean things up.

I started using it today and it makes things a LOT easier!

- Karen

[chromatographer]

Hi Karen,

That sounds like some of the programming I'd like to do. Can you tell us more about how you wrote yours - what software or language? Did you use chemstation macros?

I started writing a program in Python a few months ago but I got sidetracked with other projects and haven't gone back to it. Still thinking about it though.

[Karen01]

Hi Karen,

That sounds like some of the programming I'd like to do. Can you tell us more about how you wrote yours - what software or language? Did you use chemstation macros?

No i did not use ChemStation Macros... I did define my own report with the Chemstation report editor but everything else was done with RealStudio.

http://www.realsoftware.com/realstudio/


Learning the ChemStation macro language would have taken too long.

- karen

[ltb9o9]

Hello Karen

How did you deal with the issue of significant figures going from the chemstation "excel" files into your final location (or do you use the pdf to get the data from ???)

[Karen01]

Hello Karen

How did you deal with the issue of significant figures going from the chemstation "excel" files into your final location (or do you use the pdf to get the data from ???)

I created a custom report format in the report editor and had ChemStation use that to create both PDF and text files.. My code parsed the text files to get sample name and analyte results to create a summary report that it saved both as a printable graphic file as a nice table, AND it also saved the same data as a tab delimited text file for import into excel.

The code used the sample names and Injection # read from the report text files to rename the individual injection PDFs so they had meaningful names, them Zipped the injections PDFs along with the summary table graphic and the summary tab delimited text file I created. The code then emailed the zip file to the person who submitted the samples.

So the sig figs were determined by what was set in the custom ChemStation report.

HTH,
- Karen