Maintenance

There are some tasks which have to be done from time to time, in order to provide an efficient service.

• Database updates
  The protein and DNA databases must be updated. New information comes in every day. The NCBI and EMBL are the two major database maintainers. Database updates must be copied from these sites at least weekly, perhaps some of them, even daily.

• Program updates
  The original blast programs were developed and are maintained at NCBI. When a new version comes out, the pvm versions should also be updated. This might be a quite difficult task, for someone who does not know the structure of the blast programs. There may be also some minor changes to be done, like when a system upgrade is done, or a new version of PVM comes out.

• Statistics, Server restart
  It would be usefull to collect some data about the requests submitted, like start time, processing time, database used, rejected requests in order to ameliorate the service. That meens, the data must be analyzed and eventually corrections will be proposed and implemented. Also somebody should have an eye on the server and restart it when a crash occurs, or when the machine is rebooted.