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Chapter 4: Inventory
Overview
Inventory is an application designed to manage the
chemical and reagent tracking needs of laboratories
and research centers. The system manages data
associated with both commercially procured and
internally produced chemical substances from their
procurement or initial production through their
depletion and disposal. To meet the needs of
institutions of all sizes, Inventory comes in two
Desktop editions (Pro and Ultra), a Workgroup
edition, and a ChemOffice Enterprise- based
edition.
Inventory Pro is an all-inclusive desktop product. It
includes Microsoft SQL-Server Desktop Engine ®
(MSDE), the redistributable database engine for
SQLServer 2000. No additional licensing is
required. Suitable for single-user installations, the
inventory database can accept up to five
simultaneous queries with no degradation of
performance 1 . The connection to the database is
not live except when you actually process a query, so
the only practical limit to the number of computers
connected to an Inventory MSDE database is the
probability of more than five users attempting
simultaneous queries.
1. MSDE is optimized for 5 concurrent users.
The word “optimized” is important here. With
up to 5 concurrent users, MSDE will perform
just like all other SQL Server editions. When
more users are connected, and all query the
server, MSDE will throttle the speed. If the clients
are connected, but are not active, nothing
will happen. MSDE will slow down only when
more than 5 queries arrive at the server at the
same time.
Inventory Ultra is the same MSDE-based product,
but includes the DVD version of ChemACX,
CambridgeSoft’s catalog of chemical products and
suppliers.
Inventory Workgroup is a thick-client SQLServerbased
product. Suitable for larger organizations that
don’t have the ability (or don’t want) to maintain an
Oracle server, it requires, but does not include, a
SQLServer license.
Inventory Enterprise is an Oracle-based,
ChemOffice Enterprise product. Designed for
large organizations, it has a number of features not
included in the Pro/Ultra/Workgroup versions.
This document describes all four products. Some
sections apply only to the Pro/Ultra/Workgroup
products, and some only to the Enterprise product.
This is noted in the text. In the examples that
follow, some of the illustrations are from the
Pro/Ultra version, and some from the Enterprise
version. The two versions are quite similar; users
should be able to recognize the UI components,
even if the illustration is not identical to what they
see on their screens. In some cases, both versions
are shown to avoid confusion.
This chapter introduces the terminology and the
User Interface, describes the set-up and
management of an inventory database, and
discusses the search forms used to locate
substances and containers in the inventory.
Terminology
The three primary entities in an Inventory system
are Locations, Substances, and Containers.
ChemOffice Enterprise Workgroup & Databases 2005 Inventory • 45
Overview