Exploring the database in the command line
View the data contained within the database using a terminal, we recommend using the VisiData tool. In addition to command line visualization, this tool has a number of other feature, including plotting. Upon opening the database with vd
, the terminal should look like this:

In this example (made with DLGs), the database contains ~3 poses for 9999 discrete ligands. Each of the rows here is a separate table or view within the database. From this screen, you can easily perform the sanity checks outline below. One should note that the number of column displayed on the first screen is 1 greater than the actual number of columns in a table (the number is correct for views). To more fully explore a given table, one may use the arrow keys or mouse to navigate to it, then press Enter/Return
to access that table/view. The user may then scroll horizontally with the arrow keys, or press q
to return up a level.
Using vd
is particularly helpful to examine possible interactions of interest, stored within the Interaction_indices
and Interactions
table.
To exit, return to the screen shown in the image above by pressing q
, then press q
to exit.
Data integrity sanity checks
There are a few quick checks the user can make to ensure that the data has been properly written from the input files to the database. Discrepancies may indicate an error occurred while writing the database or the input file format did not match that which Ringtail expected.
- The number of rows in the Ligands
table should match the number of input ligand files
- The number of rows in the Results
table should be ~ max_poses
* number of files
and should be less than or equal to that number. For DLGs not every ligand may have up to max_poses
, which is why the number of rows is typically smaller than max_poses
* number of DLGs
.
- No ligand should have more than max_poses
rows in the Results
table.
- If storing all poses, the number of rows in the Results table should match the number of ligands
* number of output poses
.
A note about visualizing bookmarks produced by ligand filters
If using visidata to look at a bookmark produced by using ligand filters, the bookmark will most likely appear blank. This is due to database connection settings in visidata and the use of the sqlite extension chemicalite
(used to aid in the ligand filters). The bookmark will still work as expected when using Ringtail functionality, for example you can write the bookmark to a csv file, or use the bookmark as basis for the next round of filtering.