Abstract
The ability to search and display chemical structures is as important as to search journal articles by authors or by titles. This paper discusses various structural searching methods available on the web. Some databases such as the Brookhaven Protein Database use keyword searching which does not provide the desired substructure search capabilities. Others like CS CheinFinder and MDL's Chemscape use graphical plug-in programs. Although plug-in programs provide more capabilities, users first have to obtain a copy of the programs. Due to this limitation, Tripos's WebSketch and ACD Interactive Lab adopt a different approach. Using JAVA applets, users create and display a structure query of the molecule on the web page without using other software. In short, chemical substructure searching has entered a new era. This new technique will likely extend itself to other electronic publications.