On November 2 - 3, 1995, a software workshop was held at Stanford University
for developers and users of laboratory management software. I am including a
summary of the workshop below. Based on one of the recommendations of this
group, we have created a mailing list at MIT (labnet-software@mtl.mit.edu)
to facilitate communication among developers and users of laboratory
management software. If you are interested in joining this mailing list,
please send mail to labnet-software-request@mtl.mit.edu. I wish to thank
all the participants and the discussion leaders for making the workshop a
success and Tom Lohman for administering the labnet-software mailing list.
Bill Murray
Senior Software Developer
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility
SOFTWARE WORKSHOP
The software workshop was an intensive one day meeting that provided a
forum for developers and users of laboratory management software to
share information, identify common problems, consider standardization,
and evaluate the potential for joint development activities. The users
and programmers discussed issues ranging from detailed technical problems
to the long-term potential for software standardization. The nineteen
participants included eight programmers and eleven lab managers and users
with representatives from UC Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, MIT Lincoln
Laboratory, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, and
Motorola.
The workshop included informal facility software presentations by
representatives of each institution and three focused discussion sessions
which produced recommendations regarding software requirements, standards,
and directions for future development. The requirements discussion, led
by Katalin Voros of UC Berkeley, focused on the remarkable similarities of
each institution's current software requirements. The group quickly
identified requirements in ten general areas: lab access control, equipment
access, communication among staff and users, reservations and scheduling,
run sheets, safety issues, on-line documentation, scheduled maintenance,
accounting, and compatibility with other universities.
During the standards discussion, led by Bill Murray of Stanford, the group
discussed the relevance of standards such as SEMATECH's CIM Application
Framework and the Object Management Group's guidelines and specifications
including CORBA. There was general agreement that standards at some level
would facilitate the sharing of data and software among university fabs.
Since no single institution can bear the cost of developing the next
generation of lab management software, the adoption of some standards would
allow joint development, or at a minimum, the sharing of what we do create
individually. Two potential areas which merit additional discussion are
standardized interfaces to lab management databases and the use of World Wide
Web (WWW) browsers as a consistent user interface to these software systems.
Can universities work together on the development of lab management software?
Ernie Wood from Motorola led this discussion focused on directions for the
future. The first step is communication, and everyone agreed that the
workshop was a big step in the right direction. To keep the communication
going, the group agreed to create a mailing list at MIT (labnet-software
@mtl.mit.edu), a World Wide Web site at Stanford, and monthly proceedings, to
be posted electronically, describing our current work on these systems. The
group also discussed the benefit of a joint pilot project to explore
standards, assess the applicability of new technology, and evaluate the
potential for electronic collaboration at multiple sites. Finally, a
representative will be sent to the Labnetwork meeting in Washington, D.C. on
December 10 to present our findings and recommendations.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 09 2004 - 07:48:57 EST