Quantum Chemistry Common Driver and Databases (QCDB) and Quantum Chemistry Engine (QCEngine): Automation and Interoperability among Computational Chemistry Programs

As part of my previous work on the adcc code for computational spectroscopy based on the algebraic-diagrammatic construction (ADC), we also integrated the package with QCEngine. This package aims at integrating different quantum-chemistry codes under a common interface for end users, which is an effort I fully support. Recently the design and structure of QCEngine and the related QCDB packages have been summarised in a publication. Its full abstract reads:

Community efforts in the computational molecular sciences (CMS) are evolving toward modular, open, and interoperable interfaces that work with existing community codes to provide more functionality and composability than could be achieved with a single program. The Quantum Chemistry Common Driver and Databases (QCDB) project provides such capability through an application programming interface (API) that facilitates interoperability across multiple quantum chemistry software packages. In tandem with the Molecular Sciences Software Institute and their Quantum Chemistry Archive ecosystem, the unique functionalities of several CMS programs are integrated, including CFOUR, GAMESS, NWChem, OpenMM, Psi4, Qcore, TeraChem, and Turbomole, to provide common computational functions, i.e., energy, gradient, and Hessian computations as well as molecular properties such as atomic charges and vibrational frequency analysis. Both standard users and power users benefit from adopting these APIs as they lower the language barrier of input styles and enable a standard layout of variables and data. These designs allow end-to-end interoperable programming of complex computations and provide best practices options by default.

Article
Daniel G. A. Smith, Anabelle T. Lolinco, Zachary L. Glick and others. Quantum Chemistry Common Driver and Databases (QCDB) and Quantum Chemistry Engine (QCEngine): Automation and Interoperability among Computational Chemistry Programs. Journal of Chemical Physics, 155, 204801 (2021). DOI 10.1063/5.0059356 [code]