The BioDirectory Registry is a simple system for specifying where to find services which provide sequence databases. A client should look at the following places in order to find this file:

 $HOME/.bioinformatics/seqdatabase.ini
 /etc/bioinformatics/seqdatabase.ini
 http://www.open-bio.org/registry/seqdatabase.ini
 

The file is a simple stanza format

 [database-name]
 tag=value
 tag=value
 [database-name]
 tag=value
 tag=value
 

where each stanza starts with the declaration of the database being in square brackets and following that one line tag=value tag value formats.

Database-name stanzas can be repeated, in which case the client should try each service in turn (starting at the first one).

The options under each stanza must have two non-optional tag=value lines being

 protocol=<protocol-type>
 location=<location-string>
 

'protocol' currently can be one of

• flat
• biofetch
• biosql

'location' is a string specific to the protocol. Any number of additional tag values are allowed in the stanza which should be passed to the appropiate constructor of the protocol to interpret. Some protocols might insist on other mandatory tags.