C 2 M: configurable chemical middleware

One of the vexing problems that besets concurrent use ofmultiple, heterogeneous resources is format multiplicity.C 2 M aims to equip scientists with a wrapper generator ontheir desktop. The wrapper generator can build wrappers, orconverters that can convert data from or into differentformats, from a high‐level description of the formats.The language in which such a high‐level description isexpressed is easy enough for scientists to be able towrite format descriptions at minimal cost. In C 2 M,wrappers and documentation for human reading areautomatically obtained from the same user‐suppliedspecifications. Initial experiments demonstrate thatthe idea can, indeed, lead to the advent ofuser‐governed wrapper generators. Future researchwill consolidate the code and extend the approach to arealistic variety of formats. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.