Entrez Programming Utilities Help

Introduction to the E-utilities

• Please see the E-utilities Introduction video for a brief introduction.
• Please see the Release Notes for details and changes.

The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) are a set of eight server-side programs that provide a stable interface into the Entrez query and database system at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The E-utilities use a fixed URL syntax that translates a standard set of input parameters into the values necessary for various NCBI software components to search for and retrieve the requested data. The E-utilities are therefore the structured interface to the Entrez system, which currently includes 38 databases covering a variety of biomedical data, including nucleotide and protein sequences, gene records, three-dimensional molecular structures, and the biomedical literature.