[ensembl-dev] REST API in production?

[Andy Yates]

Hi Brett,

It's brilliant to hear that not only have you been loving the VEP but also considering switching over to using the REST VEP. 

Firstly the REST API is reasonably stable in a server sense (uptime is approx. 99%). However in the programatic sense I do envisage changing endpoint outputs to make data structures consistent with each other. This will be done as clearly as possible and we will try to maintain the older outputs until we move out of beta [1]. Secondly we are going to move to the VEP.pm module (our version of VEP is not the same as what is used in the VEP script) which will allow us to use the caches and provide an even faster VEP service. This will undoubtedly cause some changes.

If you are going to use the REST service in it's current state then as you've said a local installation is a must & ensure you have a well defined interface allowing you to switch implementations should you need to. As for support I'm planning on supporting it for as long as possible so ~2 years should be feasible :).

All the best,

Andy

[1]. Whilst we will try to do this in practice it might not happen

Andrew Yates                   Ensembl Core Software Project Leader
EMBL-EBI                       Tel: +44-(0)1223-492538
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus   Fax: +44-(0)1223-494468
Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK         http://www.ensembl.org/

On 14 May 2013, at 17:34, Brett Thomas <bthomas at atgu.mgh.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Hi everyone -- 
> 
> We've been using the Variant Effect Predictor in a production research pipeline for the past year. It's been invaluable - can't tell you how much we appreciate your work. 
> 
> Currently we annotate VCF files with the vep perl script (offline mode). I was considering switching to the "fetch consequences" service over the REST API (in a local installation). 
> 
> This has worked great so far - but I know it's still in beta - so wanted to see if there are any reasons you would caution against using this in production. Is the REST service fairly stable at this point? Are you confident it will be supported for the next ~2 years of ensembl releases? 
> 
> Thanks again -- 
> Brett Thomas
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