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How To Prevent Interproscan Webservice From Giving An Http Error After 120 Sequences?

I want to interproscan about 1000 sequences. I'm using their web service using a modified version of their python soap client. I submit the sequences one at a time, waiting for each sequence to be finished before starting the next one (so no batch job).

After around 120 sequences, the service gives an HTTPError. I checked the input and did runs with different order in which I submit the sequences, so I know that the input is correct.

One possibility that I can think of for the error is that I'm using too many sequences after each other and that I get automatically blocked. So I let my program wait for 2 minutes after submitting the 100th sequence, but this did not help.

What causes this error, and how can I prevent it from happening?

python webservice

1 answer

Why not asking them ?

Niek has followed up with EMBL-EBI Support, and the issue has been resolved.

FWIW the problem turned out to be a case where the User-agent HTTP header used by Niek's client grew to over 8KB which caused the web server to reject the request with a "400 Bad Request". Changing the client code to ensure this does not happen solved the problem.

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