Since the ease in East-West political and business relations, the demand for electronic support in mutually gaining information by means of online databases has been ever more heavily felt. Current information shortages find their ultimate reason in widespread misjudgement and disbelief about CMEA online information system operation. The article gives proof of a number of online database systems in the USSR, the GDR, and some multilateral systems, to some of which the author was licensed as a user in 1989. Perestroika in Western information circles is needed as badly as is the revision of the 'information supermarket' approach: a promising initiative combines trade promotion and information services in a newly built Berlin trade centre. © 1990.