Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!bionet!GENBANK.BIO.NET!kristoff From: kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: Suggestion for keywords in genbank Message-ID: Date: 1 Feb 91 05:36:28 GMT Sender: kristoff@genbank.bio.net Lines: 25 Dan, Be careful if you want to permit keyword searches by e-mail. Even though we get asked this all the time, there is a good reason for not allowing it. The potential for horrendous amounts of output if an unfortunate choice of words is made is very high. That is why we restrict the use of IRX to the dial-up account. In IRX if a person does a search on something specific like "gene" 8-) the program warns them that they have found 1,465,345,567 entries and would they like to consider rephrasing their query. Although a warning mechanism, e.g., sending back the number of entries, could be built into e-mail, this is obviously more work than the dial-up approach which allows people to scrutinize the output first instead of just sending it back through the mail system. Perhaps a compromise for e-mail keyword searches would be just to return the DEFINITION lines describing the sequences and then let the user send additional mail to retrieve entries of interest. The worst output one could get from a search of release 66 would be about 41,000 DEFINITION lines in a mail message! That would be less than a 4 megabyte mail message 8-) 8-) 8-)!!! "Bon chance" as they say in France! Dave