Developer Information
Overview
BLAST is public domain software.
Web service interface
You may submit BLAST jobs for processing at NCBI via an HTTP-based interface. Documentation and sample perl code are available. The normal BLAST report is a human readable output that is subject to change with little or no notice. For developers wishing to parse the BLAST output the NCBI makes available ASN.1, XML, and a simplified hit-table. Please consult the NCBI Handbook Chapter for further information.
C++ Toolkit implementation
The currently-maintained implementation of BLAST is part of the NCBI C++ Toolkit. The algorithm core is written in C and a documented C++ API is available. A C api for compatibility with the C toolkit is also available. The source code may be downloaded by FTP or retrieved by anonymous cvs. cvsweb and LXR source browsers are also available.
C Toolkit implementation
The original implementation of BLAST is part of the NCBI C Toolkit. Source code (.tar.gz, .zip) is available. This codebase is deprecated.
References
- BLAST Scoring Parameters, E. Michael Gertz, 16 March 2005.