BLAST+ 2.11.0 now available with limited usage reporting to help improve BLAST

BLAST+ 2.11.0 release is now available from our FTP site.  With this release, BLAST+ now provides usage reports to NCBI to help us improve BLAST.  This information is limited to the name of the BLAST program, some basic database metadata, a few BLAST parameters, as well the number and total size of your queries (Figure 1).

Figure 1. An example of the report sent back to NCBI from the 2.11.0 BLAST programs.

We receive no information that reveals the context of your research and no sequences from your queries or database.  See the Privacy document for more details on the information we collect, how we will use it, and how you can opt-out of reporting.

Another new feature allows threading by query batch in rpsblast/rpstblastn. Enabling this option using -m t provides more efficient searching with large numbers of queries.

Important bug fixes in this release include removing the need for a internet connection for the blast_formatter and, for Windows systems, makeblastdb no longer requires as much virtual memory and produce smaller LMDB files.  See the release notes for details on more improvements and bug fixes

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