[Open-bio-l] [Bioperl-l] Fwd: [Utilities-announce] NCBI Revised E-utility Usage Policy

[Peter]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Peter <biopython at maubp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Peter <biopython at maubp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> If we assume the user has their timezone information setup right, it should
>> also be possible to count the number of requests made within the hours of
>> 9AM to 5PM Eastern Time and issue a warning or raise an error if over 100.
>> Currently Biopython leaves this to the user.
>>
>> Interestingly the older guideline text here gives the 100 limit,
>> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/eutils_help.html#UserSystemRequirements
>> but the new text does not:
>> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=helpeutils&part=chapter2#chapter2.Usage_Guidelines_and_Requiremen
>
> Eastern Time (EST) is 5 hours behind of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
> aka Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), thus 09:00 to 17:00 EST is 14:00 to 22:00
> UTC. I notice the NCBI do not appear to mention summer/winter time
> (daylight saving time), which may be an oversight.
>
> Peter

I've been looking at this more closely, the old guideline was:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/eutils_help.html#UserSystemRequirements
"Run retrieval scripts on weekends or between 9 pm and 5 am Eastern
Time weekdays for any series of more than 100 requests."

This doesn't define a series - for example, would it be OK to run a script
making 75 requests every two hours? This could be regarded as multiple
separate series each under 100 requests, but the cumulative count over
the 8 peak hours is 600 requests.

Sadly the new guidelines are even more vague:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=helpeutils&part=chapter2#chapter2.Usage_Guidelines_and_Requiremen
"... and limit large jobs to either weekends or between 9:00 PM and
5:00 AM Eastern time during weekdays."

Not very helpful - maybe leaving this rule down to the user (as Biopython
currently does) is the best option.

Peter