Generating and Accessing Data on the Web

One of the primary goals of this project is to make computational chemistry tools more accessible, and to enhance their use within a collaborative online environment where data can be generated within the web browser. This does not preclude the use of existing tools, but it provides an alternative way of accessing tools that have seen significant investment using one of the most pervasive mediums in the modern world. The use of web-based tools makes the platform accessible on low powered phones through to the most powerful desktop workstations. The platform itself can provide access to calculations already run almost instantaneously, while enabling authenticated users to generate new data.
The previous section describes the non-graphical server-side capabilities developed for the software platform. These are necessary tools, but they do not offer an approachable user interface for generating, interacting with, analyzing and visualizing data. This section discusses a number of capabilities developed to offer web-based interfaces to look at data, search it, categorize it, and in many cases these components can be used independently of the complete platform. The high-level web technologies used include JavaScript and TypeScript for code development, WebGL for 3D visualization, and React as a framework for exposing elements in web applications.