Computer network in chemistry: Problems and results at the Chemical Engineering Faculty of the Technical University Budapest

At the end of the 1980s design and development of an information and networ k system started for the Chemical Engineering Faculty of the TU Budapest. O ur aim was to provide computer aided communication for departments, adminis tration and students of the faculty. Since its beginnings the development h as gone through many phases, concerning both the applied software technolog ies and the range of features offered by the system. The original system has been created for DOS, using Novell file servers and concurrently accessed dBase database. As the system grew from being a spec ialised program for the faculty into a more complete solution for all facul ties of our university our next goal was to increase the security provided by the program. This was achieved by implementing a special client server a rchitecture. In the following phase, work has begun to convert the working system to an Oracle database accessed by client programs written for MS Win dows in Delphi. We discuss the stages of this project through the features offered by the s ystem, the chemical research and education methodology changed by the infor mation technology and the software engineering technologies applied in the system.