[Open-bio-l] Toolkits and the new eutils policies

[Chris Fields]

On Mar 25, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Ewan Birney wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Peter wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 6:17 PM, Chris Fields <cjfields at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>> I'll cc this for the others in BioPerl, Biopython, Bioruby,
>>> Ensembl, etc so they know and can pass it around.
>>> Thanks Eric, happy to have that clarified.
>>> 
>>> chris
>> 
>> Thanks Chris (& Eric),
>> 
>> Looks like we are fine as things stand: continue to
>> encourage the user to set the email (with a warning
>> if omitted), and try to encourage them to override the
>> tool parameter if appropriate (e.g. if part of a larger
>> application like a Galaxy workflow).
>> 
>> [I don't see any point in forcing people to invent
>> tool names for each of their one off Entrez scripts,
>> or interactive sessions - defaulting to BioPerl etc
>> here seems sane]
> 
> At the very least teh default should be "BioPerl Toolkit Placeholder For Non Registered Client" so that NCBI know precisely that the end programmer has not put something in there sensibly.
> 
> And there should be a loud warning. I think it's fine to actually
> throw an exception. If someone is running a one off script, then they
> made the function call and can modify it. If someone's developing something more serious then they've got the time to think it through.
> 
> 
> I see little benefit in letting a default happen with just a warning.


I agree re: throwing an exception.  Not sure I see the point of setting the tool at all if we're throwing an exception when the tool isn't changed from the default (would be just as easy to throw if it's not set), but I definitely see the benefit of an exception re: email.

chris


>> 
>> Peter
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>> 
> 
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