BioServices: a common Python package to access biological Web Services programmatically.
BACKGROUND
Web interfaces provide access to numerous biological databases. Many can be accessed to in a programmatic way thanks to Web Services. Building applications that combine several of them would benefit from a single framework.


RESULTS
BioServices is a comprehensive Python framework that provides programmatic access to major bioinformatics Web Services (e.g. KEGG, UniProt, BioModels, ChEMBLdb). Wrapping additional Web Services based either on Representational State Transfer or Simple Object Access Protocol/Web Services Description Language technologies is eased by the usage of object-oriented programming.


METHODS
BioServices releases and documentation are available at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bioservices under a GPL-v3 license.
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5230, Denmark, Translational Research Laboratory, Breast Cancer Unit, Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL), Gran via 199, L'Hospitalet del Llobregat, Barcelona 08908, Catalonia, Spain and Biomedical Research Institute of Girona, Girona 17007, Catalonia, Spain.
Thomas
T
Cokelaer
Dennis
D
Pultz
Lea M
LM
Harder
Jordi
J
Serra-Musach
Julio
J
Saez-Rodriguez
D019295:Computational Biology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D011381:Programming Languages; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration