When to write a DataEngine and when not?

[Luca Beltrame]

Hello Plasma developers,

since I finally got to install the Python bindings for Plasma I wanted to 
start working on a small project. In short, this small applet I have in mind 
would be used as a "search applet" for a specific service provided by the 
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The user would input a 
term (a specific code), then, some information would be retrieved (using 
already-written code by the Biopython project), the results would be parsed 
and shown to the user.

Now, I wonder if this warrants the creation of a specific DataEngine or not . 
90% of the functions to retrieve data are already implemented, what's missing 
(and that I'd write) would be a part to parse the results (they come in XML). 
As far as I understand, DataEngines work with data that is either timed or 
continuous, while in this case it is the user that will decide when to search, 
so they're not very fit for this purpose.

Am I making any sense, or did I get everything wrong? 

Thanks in advance!

P.S: CC me, I'm not subscribed (I probably will when I have some real code to 
show)
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