BioServices: a common Python package to access biological Web Services programmatically

TLDR

Web interfaces grant access to numerous biological databases, and programmatic Web Services enable integration, making a unified framework advantageous for combining multiple services. The framework simplifies wrapping additional Web Services—whether REST or SOAP/WSDL—using object‑oriented programming. BioServices is a comprehensive Python framework that offers programmatic access to major bioinformatics Web Services such as KEGG, UniProt, BioModels, and ChEMBLdb.

Abstract

Motivation: 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.