[EMBOSS] Opinions on Web Access to EMBOSS

[Steve Taylor]

Hi,

> 
> We are in the process of migrating our users from GCG to EMBOSS,
> specifically from SeqWeb to EMBOSS-Explorer.
> 
> I've noticed a lot of installations from Google for EMBOSS-Explorer.  I
> also noticed some people leave their installations open for anyone to
> use, and others have restricted access.  
> 
> I'd like to ask people to comment on why they choose to restrict access
> to their installation.

We used to run open web access several years ago and we did get some jobs that ran for a long time and took up a lot of CPU. In some cases these made our web server grind to a halt. So I guess this 
may happen with EMBOSS-Explorer if, for example, a large phylogeny job was run. These processes often get started by users not understanding the parameters and inputs they are using, rather than being 
malicious.

Also we run a bioinformatics service and we need to track which users are using the system. We support hundreds of users and we can spot problems and advise them more
easily by looking at the logs if we get them to log in with a username/password.

Regards,

Steve