* Every user maintains his/her own stocks database with freely defined concentration, volumina etc. * The identity of compounds and stocks is maintained in the design and evaluation of crystallization experiments. It is therefore possible to correlate drop composition and success rates and to share this information with other users. * Crystallization experiments are designed individually, in series or by random. * Crystallization plates can be copied from a large number of predefined commercially available screenings. * Crystallization plates are assigned to projects. * The program hosts a browsable and searchable 1:1 copy of the BMCD (Biological molecule crystallization database: http://wwwbmcd.nist.gov:8080/bmcd/bmcd.html, not included in download package). * The dimensions of crystallization plates can be freely chosen. * The number of drops per well can be freely chosen. * Drops can be defined by adding stock volumes or by setting final concentrations. * The program displays recipes for all stocks used in the plate and the stock volumes needed for the plate. * Drop concentrations, pipetting recipes and observation sheets can be displayed in ready-to-print layout. * Users can calculate an estimate of success of a given drop composition based on data from the BMCD, all users who have recorded observations within the program or of a particular project. * Observations can be documented in form of free text (per drop or per plate), scores and pictures. * The user can view plate and project summaries with some success statistics over the drops within a plate/project. * XtalBase can be easily configured such that any kind of data or groups of data can be stored in the system. Interfaces to access, browse, search, and import these data are instantly available. * The currently managed data comprise: protein batches, compounds/stocks, crystallization plates, solutions, data collections, data sets, coordinates, refinement cycles, publications. * All data stored in the database can be searched via a unified search interface. The search interface allows searching in all or only specific fields of a database entry. Search terms can be concatenated by logical 'AND', 'OR' and can also be negated ('NOT'). * Data can be imported from text files with help of importer templates. * Plate data can be imported from text files, which are formatted in one of two possible formats. * Data can be exported using freely defined export templates. * It is possible via mouse-click to run external executables and provide these executables with data from the database. The output of these executables can be either displayed or parsed by an importer and fed back into specific fields of the database. For example XtalBase can be configured such that - on mouse-click - an external program is invoked that would determine the sequence from a pdb file and produce an output, from which the sequence is reimported into the database. * Users can share their data either with other specific users, with the user group they belong to or with all other registered users. * The program administrator has full control over who can view what data. * Upgrade to a more recent version always preserves all data and personal settings. * XtalBase has a built-in messageing facility, which can be used to send messages to specific users, all members of a group or all registered users. * A help text system provides context-related help throughout the program. |