ANDY: a general, fault-tolerant tool for database searching on computer clusters.
CONCLUSIONS
ANDY (seArch coordination aND analYsis) is a set of Perl programs and modules for distributing large biological database searches, and in general any sequence of commands, across the nodes of a Linux computer cluster. ANDY is compatible with several commonly used distributed resource management (DRM) systems, and it can be easily extended to new DRMs. A distinctive feature of ANDY is the choice of either dedicated or fair-use operation: ANDY is almost as efficient as single-purpose tools that require a dedicated cluster, but it runs on a general-purpose cluster along with any other jobs scheduled by a DRM. Other features include communication through named pipes for performance, flexible customizable routines for error-checking and summarizing results, and multiple fault-tolerance mechanisms.


BACKGROUND
ANDY is freely available and can be obtained from http://compbio.berkeley.edu/proj/andy.


BACKGROUND
Supplemental data, figures, and a more detailed overview of the software are found at http://compbio.berkeley.edu/proj/andy.
Smith
Andrew
A
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102, USA.
Chandonia
John-Marc
JM
Brenner
Steven E
SE
D003205:Computing Methodologies; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D009862:Online Systems; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods*; D017421:Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*