The nucleotide sequence database collected and maintained by DDBJ is quarterly released to the public at online anonymous FTP site.DDBJ has provided 4 types (Flat file format, FASTA format, DDBJ-XML format and CDS sequences) data so far.
Additionally, since DDBJ Release62 (June 2005) the INSD-XML formatted periodical release data have been also provided by DDBJ. The INSD-XML formatted data had been available only daily update part since April 29, 2005.
The INSD-XML is one of the DTD (Data Type Definition) commonly used by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) which is comprised of DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank, for their data releases.Although the INSD-XML was released to the public, the INSDC will confirm that there are no problems in the data exchange for all entries, and also will ensure that it is possible to write/read XML documents in a common format. Therefore, in some cases, DTD itself might be changed and/or some changes might be made at the stage of the development from DTD to XML document. The version number is shown in the DTD file.
The anonymous FTP directories and the file names released at DDBJ web pages are as shown below.
Use of the INSD-XML at FTP
URL: ftp://ftp.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/ddbj_database/ddbj/xml/insd/
DTD for the INSD-XML (INSD_INSDSeq.dtd) is located in the same directory.
Use of the INSD-XML at getentry
If you specify "INSD-XML" as output format in DNA database retrieval, you will obtain the data in the INSD-XML format.
DDBJ-XML was designed aiming for the generation of documents making easier computer program manipulation and being also readable by humans. It is based on the concept of "flat file format", which has been widely used so far.
Meanwhile, INSD-XML was designed focusing on Features/qualifiers structure rather than having familiarity with the Flat File format.
Reference
Release of INSD-XML formatted data (Jun. 10, 2005)
The DDBJ release is now available also in XML (Jul. 25, 2001)
DDBJ introduced XML (May 11, 2001)