Chromatography Forum

Dear Colleagues, It is much possible I may be 100% wrong, but is true that the powerfull ChemStation has been more choosen than Empower and EZChrom? Is this true or one bad perception? I am not lover of any HPLC brand, just use to respect all of them because each one has its own superior detail. Could you share your valuable comment, please?

if you look at the sales of stand alone machines, then chemstation has a good share of sells
but for anything that requires GLP and CFR compliance or/and client server set ups, chemstation is not the first choice.
in pharmas that have client server set ups, the leading CDSs are empower and chromeleon.
ezchrom and now openlab ezchrom is third.
i personally do not see chemstation has powerful, i do not see any chromatography software that is file based has powerful. on the contrary in my view they lack those very important features that allow databased CDS's to be really powerful.
also chemstation is only in order to control agilent systems. it is not like other CDSs capable of handling other hardwares.

@unmgvar
Although there are advantages in having a database behind the CDS, it is in many occasions not required or desired. It all depends what type of business you are in.
At Agilent we do have an optional database called OpenLAB ECM, which can be used to augment the OpenLAB CDS ChemStation as well as OpenLAB CDS EZChrom to facilitate those in demand of a database behind the CDS.
For more info please turn to your Agilent representative or visit our web site .

I personally prefer Chemstation (MSDChem) for mass spec data analysis. True, there are many drawbacks to the file-based system and other aspects of the software, but there will be drawbacks to any system until the year infinity when every company has had enough time to work out all the bugs and make the software "the best available" for every customer on the planet.

I like the fact that I can use macros in both the acquisition and post-analysis processing to essentially have the instrument or software do whatever I can imagine in my head. And if I can't manage to write the macro myself (maybe too complex of an idea) there is usually someone on the forum here or at Agilent (for a fee) who can or already has written it.

I'll be sad when Chemstation is gone (assuming some day it will be replaced). I currently export all my Thermo data from Xcalibur to CDF file and then import it to Chemstation and calibrate and process the data there. I lose all the file information except the file name but I just keep a copy of the original sequence for reference. This is still easier than calibrating in Thermos Target Quan/Quan Desk software that they developed for dioxin HRMS analysis. I don't like it at all.

I'm still waiting for an Open Source software that I can import all my data and view chromatograms and mass spectra for which I can also build a calibration table and set up reports. OpenChrom is the best there is right now but there is no support for calibration/quantitation. This has to be done in excel. Unless there is something that I don't know about it.

Just my opinion on the topic. Nothing more.

Dear varossf
using a CDS with an integrated data base has nothing to do with the type of business you are in
it is all about how well you actually integrate and do your data mining.
the best way to put it is to say that using a data base instead of file based, is like when the first softwares were used instead of those HP plotters. back then people used scissors to get analytical results.
so you are correct, it is sometimes not required, if you have the time to waste. and the only reason for not desiring it is because you would be scared of technological changes. i can understand both cases
ECM is an Enterprise Content Manager, not a CDS. you are simply using the old SSI loop around to provide some sort of data base support by "seemlesly" embedding chemstation and ezchrom has a layer inside another software.
i have seen it. you are still using ezcrhom and chemstation as filed based and you need to export the desired fields inside the data base for real usage. at least that is what i got from the demo that was given to us
and really, a third software? more bugs?
empower and chromeleon are data based CDS from the design and not given a work around solution. one advantage of chromeleon is that it can choose to work with either 3 types of data bases and is not limited like empower to only oracle. this makes it easier to implement.
here a few example where a file based software fails
take 1 year of data, make it simple, only 300 chromatograms (not 3000)
1. a chemist student wants to go over all the experiments where he got a is main compound clean above 90%, all projects all sequences.
2. R&D user, wants to recall the history of a given column that he ran on the system and see in which projects it was used, in one go, not by going project by project.
3. QC user wants to recall all the sequences that did not comply to a given SST requirement. or see all assay results that were not within specs all projects, in one go.
4. QC lab manager wants to get a general idea of the usage time of the HPLC or GC, to see out of 1 year how much time the instrument was running injections. all projects, all users, by user, by project.
in client server, with a centralized data base, this is even better.
try to summarize together the results done on 5 different HPLCS for a given project.

and i will maybe next time explain how much more powerful the report of chromeleon is in comparison to the old 90's chemstation macros, or any other software in my view.

I'd say I have to agree with Unmgvar on a lot of points. Having worked in both a contract lab setting and a pure research setting I would say the lack of Database in Chemstation has always left me confused. For our QC lab manager, it was very hard to figure out what we were doing day to day or in an entire year with our instruments. We were required to print out and keep paper records of everything we needed for the data work-up for the entire project as it was near impossible to query this information from Chemstation later. I hate the '90s era text based report formats as well. Don't get me started on the fact that your sequence table "print-out" is still limited to 8 characters in each field to obtain the full print out. I figured by revision E.02 (released a couple years ago?) this would have been fixed so that it prints the full sequence info.

The main things I like about Chemstation are the data processing aspects (integration, quantitation etc.) and instrument control functions which are virtually endless. It is good for stand-alone data analysis and acquisition (which is primarily what I do now) but not much else. I agree that integrating it into a full lab with QC and all of those extra things is very hard. I worked with our IT guys at my last job to do that. We had to write our own LIMS system with a separate import routine for each instrument and sample type. It was awful to work with. Maybe there are better ways to deal with Chemstation data but we couldn't figure one out. All QC calcs were done in our LIMS system because we found it too hard to manage through Chemstation alone.

Again, just my personal opinion and experience. But I do love to work with Chemstation for daily analysis.

I have been pondering how to respond to this as I do not want to start a endless discussion on good versus not-so-good, but let me try without compromising myself.
Basically having a database CDS does have its advantages, no doubt about that. We at Agilent have also recognized that and that's why we added the OpenLAB database to it.
However, it is not just a central storage where you put your files(!) in. In OpenLAB ECM/CDS combination you add the so-called Intelligent Reporter functionality to the ECM database and that will store the results of the OpenLAB CDS into the database. Then the Intelligent Reporter does the reporting against the database and not on the individual files. So now you can start reporting criss cross the database combining various variables and put them into reports that make sense. Instrument utilization, QC trending, outlier reporting etc etc (as given as examples by unmgvar) are now possible.
Some info you'll find in this marketing video
http://www.chem.agilent.com/en-US/Produ ... orter.aspx
A brochure you'll find here
http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/bro ... endium.pdf

Hopefully this clarifies a bit what we are doing with database and reporting.

I feel that I have made enough 'advertisement' on OpenLAB CDS by now, it is not my habit to do this on public forums, but I am always glad to provide information.

Enjoy your day!

varossf,

I understand the concept of OpenLab, but do you think it would benefit a research facility with mostly Agilent instruments (some other vendors for IC etc.) throughout multiple labs? Or is it best to stick with the Chemstation or Mass Hunter systems we are currently using? In other words, can you think of anything that OpenLAB can offer us that we may be missing out on by not having it. I don't know a lot about it or have any idea how it would make our lives easier.

Currently most of our instruments are NOT in a network for security reasons. However, we recently have an internal only LABNET for networking instruments to Data Servers so we can have automated data backup and remote (from our offices) access to the data for processing. This option also requires separate data processing licenses of Chemstation etc. for in our offices.

Any ideas or thoughts?

@tlahren
let us discuss thid off-line. You might have specific interests you might not want to discuss in public. My email address is in the profile. I am travelling this week and next week but that allows me to look at it in the evening. Drop me an email please.

I would just as soon not have a CDS loaded up with too much - keep the forms and data snarl ups to the LIMS platform. All I want is an easy to use and low cost system; save the data fiddling headaches for the main platform. Chromatography software should be cheap and focus on the graphic and signal processing elements.

@varossf

I can't find your email address in your profile. Feel free to contact me.

ty(dot)lahren(at)gmail(dot)com.

Have you not seen metaboanalyst.ca

Open labs would give great flexibility for the tandem conversions and eliminate the cross platform approach when dealing with the .Ds
I'm using OpenChrom from germany to deal with overlays when using full scan GC/MS data looking for organismal pathways using yeasts.

Daniel

@ddycus,
Wow that site looks very interesting. I'll have to give it a closer look. Thanks for the link!