Another wish for life science APIs and web services
May 18, 2008
So today I thought I’d give Proteus2 a try. Proteus2 is a protein structure prediction server. There are many around, of varying quality. This one has good pedigree, which is part of what attracted me. What I am left with is a frustration that is not new. When structure prediction servers became common, I could understand the need to have queues and all the static pages with automatic refresh. But that was then. In this day and age, things should be different, but they aren’t. The screenshot below was taken close to 2 hours after my job was submitted (it’s 4 hours as I write this, but still waiting).
In a day when we expect our search queries to be instantaneous, why can’t we expect a structure prediction server to start a job quickly. It’s not like they are all getting hammered by traffic. The reason itself is hardly surprising. The funding models, the way the services are set up, etc haven’t really changed all that much in the past 5-6 years, but our expectations for web design and what we want from a web service have. Those of you applying for funding and setting up web servers probably know this better than I do. What’s keeping academics from setting up servers on the cloud other than funding models?
Another pet peeve, not exactly related to this one, software that needs to be download (source) from a particular site. In a day with good code repositories available, I wish most projects would be hosted there, with version control and the potential of others getting involved.
It’s late. Enough ranting.
Image via Wikipedia
Technorati Tags: Proteus2, Protein Structure Prediction, Web Services
Posted by Deepak Singh | Filed Under Modeling & Simulation, Software & Internet
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