[Developers] Too Many Writes Error

[Tim Kientzle]

> I seem to have reached some sort of quota on writes to Freebase...

We do have such a quota.  It does not limit the number of write
requests that you make, however.  It limits the number of
"primitives" that you create.  If you encountered it, you
did create a lot of instances.  (Depending on exactly how you
did it, "refreshing" something usually does create a complete
new instance that supersedes the old one.)

> It's only about 3-400 records, but I am testing an upload script, and 
> ran it about 15-20 times yesterday, ...

We ask people to test such things on sandbox.freebase.com,
which has no write limits and was built specifically to handle
this kind of testing.

We've developed a pretty standard process for handling robots
and automated applications (we use essentially this same
process even for applications we develop internally):

  1) Test and debug the application against sandbox.freebase.com.

  2) Get a customized account (with an elevated write limit, if
     necessary) to run the application against www.freebase.com.

The second step here (a customized account for the application)
is mostly to help us track overall usage.  (We audit robot usage
a little differently than usage by "real people.")

> Ideally, I'd like to make sure no one who isn't running my app
 > can see, change, or add to this data.

We do not support private data.  Our system has limited
support for restricting writes to critical information, but
no support for restricting read access.  (Freebase itself stores
public account information in Freebase where it can be freely
read but private account information---including passwords and
email addresses, for instance, are stored outside of Freebase.)

Let us know how we can help,

Tim Kientzle