As announced last month, NCBI will begin assigning larger (64-bit) numeric ‘GIs’ to the remaining sequence types that still receive these identifiers. This change is expected as soon as Nov. 15th, 2021 but could occur earlier if data submission volumes are unexpectedly high. This is a reminder that all organizations and developers using our products should review software for any remaining reliance on GIs and compatibility with these larger identifiers.
How do you know if your software or organization may be impacted?
If you have built custom software to interface with NCBI data and consume a sequence database UID (i.e. GI), process the GI from an ASN1 or XML product, or process the GI from any tabular product on FTP, you should review all code to ensure that the new, longer, 64-bit GIs will be handled properly. To ensure a smooth transition and the best overall experience, please update to the latest versions of NCBI-provided programmatic and command line tools. Alternatively, you could make updates to your code to use accession.version identifiers instead of GIs.
NCBI is here to help the community as we make this change. Stay tuned here or follow NCBI Twitter where we will share updates and additional information, such as a final confirmation of the projected cutover date.
Please contact info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
with any questions about this change or to determine if any software you are using is affected.
Thanks, this helps out a lot!