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

[Peter]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Phillip San Miguel <pmiguel at purdue.edu> wrote:
>
> Maybe GenBank is hoping that developers will create Genbank rules-compliant
> modules when accessing their resources. That is, for EUtilities by default,
> the tools would check the local time and cut off requests to 100 if outside
> the hours of 9PM-5AM Eastern Time. Also the number of requests could be
> limited to 3 per second.

Biopython (and I assume BioPerl et al) already enforces the Entrez 3
requests per second rule. That bit is easy.

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

> But it seems like it would be better if Genbank would return some sort of
> "load" field with the response to each request. That would allow feedback
> control of a series of requests. It could be tuned however Genbank likes,
> but past a certain threshold the client program would know that another
> request within a certain amount of time will result in the IP being banned.

Interesting idea - could be useful for large jobs.

Peter

P.S. We're talking about more than just GenBank here - The Entrez utilities
cover multiple databases.