[Bioperl-l] EUtilities term handling

[Hilmar Lapp]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 3:19 AM, Sendu Bala wrote:

> This is actually a general question and not limited to EUtilities.  
> As I
> see it EUtiltiies lets you do queries in Bioperl that you can do on a
> website. The question is, should a Bioperl module always work with
> queries that the website it is a front-end to works with?

I think yes, but stick to this definition.

Using your example, if you input 'BRCA2+9606[taxid]' on the Entrez  
website it will actually not work. Hence, it should be no surprise  
that it doesn't work either using Bio::DB::EUtilities.

The URL you are using to make your point is much more an example for  
using a web-service (SOAP, REST, or not) than it is for using a  
website. Using the web-service URL with a space in place of the '+'  
works, but yields a different result (just searches for BRCA2), so if  
tested for correct result the test fails.

I.e., you don't expect an input form on a website to accept URL- 
encoded input. Instead, you expect it to do any URL-encoding for you  
that needs to be done. Conversely, if you are using a URL to retrieve  
stuff using e.g. wget or curl, it is clear that you will need to do  
URL encoding yourself unless there is a command line option that lets  
you instruct the querying program to do so.

I would be careful with mangling the two definitions into one,  
resulting in a module that needs to serve two masters. You could  
consider providing an option though that lets you turn off the URL  
encoding on demand.

Aside from that, one of the advantages of having the service wrapped  
in Bioperl is in fact that you can have it accept a wider variety of  
parameters that the actual service would allow you to have, e.g.,  
arrays, hashes, or whatever seems appropriate.

My $0.02.

	-hilmar

-- 
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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