Open Babel is computer
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
, a chemical
expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if� ...
mainly used to interconvert
chemical file format
A chemical file format is a type of data file which is used specifically to depicting molecular data. One of the most widely used is the chemical table file format, which is similar to ''Structure Data Format'' (SDF) files. They are text files ...
s.
About
Due to the strong relationship to
informatics this program belongs more to the category
cheminformatics
Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "''in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive proble ...
than to
molecular modelling
Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials scie ...
. It is available for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
,
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
, and
Android. It is
free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
released under a
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...
(GPL) 2.0.
The project's stated goal is:
"Open Babel is a community-driven scientific project assisting both users and developers as a cross-platform program and library designed to support molecular modeling, chemistry, and many related areas, including interconversion of file formats and data."
History
Open Babel and
JOELib were derived from the
OELib cheminformatics
Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "''in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive proble ...
library. In turn, OELib was based on ideas in the original chemistry program Babel and an unreleased
object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...
library called ''OBabel''.
Major features
* chemical expert system
* interconversion of many
chemical file format
A chemical file format is a type of data file which is used specifically to depicting molecular data. One of the most widely used is the chemical table file format, which is similar to ''Structure Data Format'' (SDF) files. They are text files ...
s
* substructure search, based on
simplified molecular-input line-entry system
The simplified molecular-input line-entry system (SMILES) is a specification in the form of a line notation for describing the structure of chemical species using short ASCII strings. SMILES strings can be imported by most molecule editors ...
(SMILES)
* fingerprint calculation
* 3D coordinate generation
* wrappers for
Python,
Perl
Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...
,
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
,
Ruby
A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...
,
C#
See also
*
Avogadro – molecular builder and editor based on Open Babel
*
Ghemical –
molecular mechanics
Molecular mechanics uses classical mechanics to model molecular systems. The Born–Oppenheimer approximation is assumed valid and the potential energy of all systems is calculated as a function of the nuclear coordinates using force fields. Mo ...
program based on Open Babel
*
JOELib – Java version of Open Babel and
OELib
*
XDrawChem – 2D drawing program based on Open Babel
*
Comparison of software for molecular mechanics modeling
This is a list of computer programs that are predominantly used for molecular mechanics calculations.
See also
* Car–Parrinello molecular dynamics
*Comparison of force-field implementations
* Comparison of nucleic acid simulation softwar ...
*
Blue Obelisk
*
List of free and open-source software packages
This is a list of free and open-source software packages, computer software licensed under free software licenses and open-source licenses. Software that fits the Free Software Definition may be more appropriately called free software; the GNU ...
References
External links
*
E-BABEL– interactive version of the Open Babel at Virtual Computational Chemistry Laboratory
chemCast Episode 003– project lead developer Geoff Hutchison was interviewed on the podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Open Babel
Computational chemistry software
Free chemistry software
Free software programmed in C++
Chemistry software for Linux
Software that uses wxWidgets
File conversion software
2005 software