Reading a comment from Tom Jupille (LCResources) regarding differences in integration parameters, etc. between different LC software packages (see "Impurity percent changes using different HPLCs!"), I recalled a topic I have been meaning to ask this group to address.

We chromatographers have a "standard" data format referred to as the AIA format (now administered by ASTM, I believe) but my experience is that not all instrument manufacturers implement this standard correctly (or at least uniformly).

In transferring data between instruments from different manufacturers, I have seen loss of the flag that should indicate the time base for the x-axis (seconds, decimal minutes, etc.) and loss or corruption of the time and date stamp.

It has been a couple of years since I observed this problem and perhaps the instrument manufacturers has fixed this but, on the other hand, not everyone buys the latest software upgrade on a regular basis.

I would be interested if anyone else has observed this problem. (Yes, I work for the FDA but my interest here is scientific and not regulatory.)

Bill Doub - FDA/DPA/StL

I have also encountered this problem, when the manufactures are questioned about the incompatibilities it is always the other manufacture's fault, incomplete implementation or nonstandard extension. Bottom line is that I don't think the manufactures really want seamless data transfer.

The last time I looked at the "standard", which was more than a couple of years ago, it wasn't complete. This left it to the manufactures to come up with a format for the portion of the data that wasn't covered by the "standard".

As of a year ago I couldn't get Millennium to read ChemStation data, likewise ChemStation and Shimadzu earlier.