DBSNP - Accessing through script

[AmitL]

Hi all,
I'm trying to create a Python script that would query DBSNP automatically using rs identifiers.
Is there a Python / Linux bash command to query DBSNP? If not, how can I still send a query through a script?

Thanks a lot,
Amit

[gringer]

If you're querying only a few (or a few thousand), then you can use Entrez utilities:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25501/

If a task requires searching for and/or downloading a large number of records, it is much more efficient to use the Entrez History to upload and/or retrieve these records in batches rather than using separate requests for each record. Please refer to Application 3 in Chapter 3 for an example. Many thousands of IDs can be uploaded using a single EPost request, and several hundred records can be downloaded using one EFetch request.

For larger queries, you're probably better off creating a local instance of the dbSNP database:

ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/snp/database/...ocal_dbSNP.txt