News

[25/11/2009] Information concerning the forthcoming release of IUCLID 5.2

A new version of IUCLID 5, IUCLID 5.2, will be released during the first quarter of 2010.

Why update IUCLID 5?

IUCLID 5 was published officially in June 2007. Since then, a first service release was made available on the IUCLID website in January 2008, and several plugins have been released that add important functions.

Since the publication of IUCLID 5, user requirements, change requests and improvement needs have been constantly collected, particularly by the IUCLID Helpdesk. These have been assessed and discussed by the OECD IUCLID User Group Expert Panel[1].

In order to respond to the IUCLID user community, some of these requirements will be implemented in the next version of IUCLID: IUCLID 5.2.

What will be changed?

The main modifications, corrections and enhancements that will be available in IUCLID 5.2 are listed hereafter:

Correction and enhancement of OECD Harmonised Templates: more than one hundred changes have been approved and will be made in IUCLID 5.2
Section 2.1 will also be updated in order to take into account the latest revisions of the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals and to incorporate some specifics of the new European CLP Regulation
Section 3.2 will be modified to give the user the possibility to provide more detailed information on tonnages
Sections 3.5 and 3.6 for the reporting of uses will be overhauled (Cf. news alert published on the IUCLID website in July 2008
The endpoint study summaries will be revised to allow the storage of parameters chosen by experts to be used to perform chemical assessments

Other modifications will include:

Specific enhancement linked to the EU REACH Regulation (e.g. creation of inquiry dossiers, modification of REACH related dossier templates)
Several improvements of the user interface, such as the possibility to open multi-line text fields for editing and to retrieve documents by creation and modification dates, etc.

What will the migration process be?

To upgrade to the new version, the data must be migrated because the data model of IUCLID 5.2 differs from that of the previous versions.

In IUCLID 5.2, this migration step will be transparent to the user because it will happen automatically during the import phase. A migration report will be created and attached to the migrated file detailing the actions performed during this process.

To facilitate the migration from IUCLID 5.0 and 5.1 to IUCLID 5.2, a "back-up plugin" will be released. This new plugin will also replace and enhance the embedded back-up functionality of IUCLID. The migration consists of a simple procedure that can be summarised as follows:

Install the "back-up plugin" in IUCLID 5
Export all information using the plugin
Uninstall IUCLID 5
Install IUCLID 5.2

Will there be compatibility issues?

IUCLID 5.2 will be backward compatible, i.e. all IUCLID 5 files will be able to be used in the latest version. However once the migration process has been performed, IUCLID 5.2 files will not be able to be processed with previous IUCLID 5 versions.

To explain the compatibility of the currently available plugins, the following three categories have been defined:

Category 1: plugins which will be compatible with IUCLID 5.2
- Bulk export plugin
- Literature Exchange plugin
Category 2: plugins that will be updated with IUCLID 5.2
- Chemical Safety Report Tool
- Query Tool
- Technical Completeness Check plugin
Category 3: plugins no longer supported in IUCLID 5.2
- SNIF migration tool
- IUCLID 4 migration tool
- Pre-registration plugin

For the last category, a standalone version of IUCLID 5.1.1 will always be available on the IUCLID website, just in case a user requires the functions that only it provides.

What is the release plan?

Before February 2010: release of the "back-up plugin" for IUCLID 5.0/5.1

February 2010: publication of IUCLID 5.2 and the new versions of all the plugins belonging to the here above mentioned 2^nd category

[1] The OECD IUCLID User Group Expert Panel was established in 1999 under the OECD Task Force on Existing Chemicals. The Panel has the following activities:

Collecting and setting priorities for user needs in terms of the user interface and functionalities of IUCLID. This includes:
- Relevance of any new OECD Harmonised Templates to the IUCLID user community;
- Functionalities for using IUCLID in new settings.
Developing, as necessary, additional training course materials for the instruction of new users on using the IUCLID software.
Developing, as necessary, additional guidance documents for users for entering data into IUCLID using the OECD Harmonised Templates.