[Biojava-l] How to parse large Genbank files?

Tue Jul 28 03:05:55 UTC 2009

Hi -

While you maybe can't do it without code changes you can probably do
it within the existing framework.  If you look at the readGenbank()
code in RichSequence.IOTools you will find that the BioJava file
parsing consists of many pluggable components which are all defined by
interfaces. Anything that implements one of those interfaces can be
plugged into the parsing frame work.  So if you want you can change
the Format object to one of your custom design (which implements
Format), you can also change the event listeners and the
SequenceBuilders. In your case the SequenceBuilder might be something
to look at, it sounds like you don't need to create all the extra
Sequence objects for every feature so you could modify that part.

Also, in the Format objects there are often methods called elideXXX()
which let you tell the Format object to skip over bits that you don't
want.

Finally, I suspect the problem with memory use is that the String,
char[], SymbolList, Sequence copying is both inefficient and worse
still is probably not releasing resources in a timely fashion. Eg once
the parser framework converts a char[] to a SymbolList is probably no
longer needs that char[] reference and might be able to null it. Then
when memory gets low the GC can clean out all the cruft.

If I have a chance I will run a profiler to see what is sucking up the
memory (and what can be released) and also see if all that copying is
making a significant impact on CPU cycles (if not it's probably more
effort than it's worth to change). The memory thing definitely needs
to change though.

- Mark

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 8:16 PM, Florian
Mittag<florian.mittag at uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> Hi Mark!
>
> On Saturday, 25. July 2009 04:20, Mark Schreiber wrote:
>> I don't think anyone has done much or anything to optimize these parsers.
>> The process you outline sounds extremely inefficient. It is also likely to
>> lead to memory leaks due to the number of copy operations.
>
> I wouldn't necessarily say that it leads to memory leaks, but it definitively
> leads to a high memory consumption (2GB are not enough for a 200MB file).
> Also, my outline of the process is based on only 2 hours of viewing the code,
> so actually I expected to be corrected on this.
> Unfortunately, it seems like I did get the right idea and it IS extremely
> inefficient.
>
> I mean, I understand that this is a high level of abstraction that might come
> in handy in many situations, but it certainly is more of an obstacle in my
> specific case.
>
>
>> As always with java, don't try and optimize without a profiler which will
>> tell you which methods are taking a long time and which objects take the
>> most memory.
>
> I think we should continue this discussion on the biojava-dev list or in a
> private conversation, as it will probably get very detailed and technical.
>
>
> My question to this list again:
> Is there a way to achieve my goal of parsing a 200MB Genbank file with the
> current biojava version without code changes?
>
>
> - Florian
>
>
>
>> On 25 Jul 2009, 1:33 AM, "Florian Mittag" <florian.mittag at uni-tuebingen.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I think this is a problem worth of its own thread, so I'll start one:
>>
>> I want to store all human chromosomes in a BioSQL database after I loaded
>> the
>> information from .gbk files. The files I get from NCBI with the following
>> URIs, where the id ranges from nc_000001 to nc_000024 plus nc_001804:
>>
>> http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=nuccore&id=nc_0
>>00023&rettype=gbwithparts&retmode=text
>>
>> I then try to parse the files as described in
>> http://biojava.org/wiki/BioJava:BioJavaXDocs#Tools_for_reading.2Fwriting_fi
>>les but it wont work. While there are no problems parsing 1804 and 24,
>> chromosome
>> 23 leads to a OutOfMemory exception although I gave it 2GB of heap space.
>>
>> Here is a stack trace (the line numbers might differ, because I already
>> tried
>> to improve GenbankFormat.java in memory efficiency):
>>
>> Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
>>        at
>> org.biojava.bio.seq.io.ChunkedSymbolListFactory.addSymbols(ChunkedSymbolLis
>>tFactory.java:222) at
>> org.biojavax.bio.seq.io.SimpleRichSequenceBuilder.addSymbols(SimpleRichSequ
>>enceBuilder.java:256) at
>> org.biojavax.bio.seq.io.GenbankFormat.readRichSequence(GenbankFormat.java:5
>>35) at
>> org.biojavax.bio.seq.io.RichStreamReader.nextRichSequence(RichStreamReader.
>>java:110) at
>> org.prodge.sequence_viewer.db.UpdateDB_Main.updateChromosome(UpdateDB_Main.
>>java:537) at
>> org.prodge.sequence_viewer.db.UpdateDB_Main.newGenome(UpdateDB_Main.java:46
>>8) at
>> org.prodge.sequence_viewer.db.UpdateDB_Main.main(UpdateDB_Main.java:164)
>>
>> The line in GenbankFormat.java is:
>>
>> rlistener.addSymbols(
>>        symParser.getAlphabet(),
>>        (Symbol[])(sl.toList().toArray(new Symbol[0])),
>>        0, sl.length());
>>
>> Sometimes it fails at the sl.toList().toArray()-part, sometimes it fails
>> later
>> inside the addSymbols method, but it always fails.
>>
>> How can this be? I mean, the file is only 190MB in size, so 2GB of memory
>> should be more than enough. Browsing through the source code, I discovered
>> what I think of as very inefficient handling of sequences:
>>
>> 1) the sequence string is read from file into a StringBuffer
>> 2) it is converted to a string (with whitespaces removed)
>> 3) a SimpleSymbolList is created out of the string
>> 4) the SymbolList is converted to a List of Symbols
>> 5) the List is converted to an array of Symbols
>> 6) the array is passed to addSymbols
>> 7) there it is added to a ChunkedSymbolListFactory
>> 8) if at some point the sequence is requested, a SymbolList is created and
>> then converted to a string.
>>
>> You see, there is a lot of copying and converting, but in the end I have
>> the same string I started with. Well, I had the string, if it ever reached
>> the end, because it will crash before completing this process.
>>
>>
>> Am I doing something wrong or is there a great potential of improving
>> parsing
>> of Genbank files?
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>   Florian
>> _______________________________________________
>> Biojava-l mailing list  -  Biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org
>> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
>
> --
> Dipl. Inf. Florian Mittag
> Universität Tuebingen
> WSI-RA, Sand 1
> 72076 Tuebingen, Germany
> Phone: +49 7071 / 29 78985  Fax: +49 7071 / 29 5091
>