A principle of high-throughput materials science is that one does not know a priori where the value of the data lies for any specific application. Trends and insights are deduced a posteriori. This requires efficient interfaces to interrogate available data on various levels. We have developed a simple WEB-based API to greatly improve the accessibility and utility of the AFLOWLIB database [14] to the scientific community. Through it, the client can access calculated physical properties (thermodynamic, crystallographic, or mechanical properties), as well as simulation provenance and runtime properties of the included systems. The data may be used directly (e.g., to browse a class of materials with a desired property) or integrated into higher level work-flows. The interface also allows for the sharing of updates of data used in previous published works, e.g., previously calculated alloy phase diagrams [19–31], thus the database can be expanded systematically.
