Web Services at the EBI

The EBI provides programmatic access to various data resources and analysis tools via. Web Services technologies.

Web Services is an integration and inter-operation technology, to ensure client and server software from various sources will work well together, the technology is built on open standards:

• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): a messaging protocol for transporting information.
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL): a standard method of describing Web Services and their capabilities.
• Representational state transfer (REST): a software architecture style.

For the transport layer Web Services utilise common network protocols, generally the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Introductory tutorials are available, which cover most popular programming languages.

We kindly ask users to submit NO MORE THAN 25 JOBS AT THE TIME AND NOT TO SUBMIT MORE JOBS UNTIL YOU HAVE OBTAINED RESULTS FOR THE LAST 25. There are many people using these services and a fair share policy has been implemented that allows us to block users that submit jobs in a manner that prevents others from using the service. This block may affect access to the EBI Web Services for an entire organisation or a class B or C subnet. Also make sure you USE A REAL EMAIL ADDRESS in your submissions. Using a fake email means we cannot contact you and will very likely result in your jobs being killed and your IP, Organisation or entire domain being black-listed. We do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

A list of Web Services provided by EMBL-EBI follows. For services from other providers (e.g. DDBJ, KEGG, NCBI, etc.) see web services registries such as BioCatalogue, The Embrace Service Registry or seekda.

• Frequently Asked Questions
• EBI Support