This paper takes a brief stock of the kinds of reaction information that various existing formats currently represent. Warr has recently presented some of the background of the development of HL7 and SPL as well as comparison with other formats and schemas for reaction representation as part of a report on the recent NIH Workshop on Reaction Informatics . This paper then gives an overview of the SPL reaction specification structures and how they are used to represent such types of information. We present some real-world examples of documents with reaction data such as a patent and a paper that about the mechanism of a biocatalyst. This SPL extension is designed to support chemical manufacturing processes, which include as a minimum the chemical reaction and the procedures and conditions to run it but can support the full life cycle ranging from initial design through synthesis, publications, patents, documentation and control of the production process, regulatory applications and monitoring, and trade and logistics. Special attention is given to a mechanism for atom-mapping of reactions as well as to the possibility to integrate Reaction SPL with laboratory automation equipment, both analytical equipment and, increasingly, automated synthesis devices. The comprehensive design of the HL7 RIM structures used in SPL allows micro-and macroscopic process scales to be represented in a comparable structure, and the design of timed and conditioned action plans as a Turing complete "programming language" can be effortlessly applied to the specification of automation processes.