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10 comments on A new data base appears

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Stuart Staniford on November 19, 2005 - 6:19am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Ok, so the thing seems now to be up without a registration, but it's almost completely useless.  There's an online web data viewer that very slowly produces totally illegible graphs, and there's some kind of huge binary file with a custom viewer, which is a Windows application (and I use a Mac).  Why they couldn't do obvious options like text files, HTML tables, or Excel, I have no idea.  Instead they spent a bunch of money in order to make the data much more difficult to use (unless I'm missing something).  I complained by email.
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Stuart Staniford on November 19, 2005 - 6:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have gone over the site again, and it is definitely useless at present.  Just presenting the data should have been such a simple thing.  Unfortunately they seem to have been seduced by Beyond 20/20, who have inserted their unbelievably poorly designed software into the situation and screwed it up.
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Slippery Slope on November 19, 2005 - 12:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
On the Beyond 20/20 WDS Table View web page, http://www.jodidb.org/IEFS/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=16 choose the action drop-down menu item "Download report data...".  In the sub menu I chose Microsoft Excel format (.xls) which is supported by my Open Office software on Linux.  Given some time today, I plan to reformat the data to observe total production by time period.
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Stuart Staniford on November 19, 2005 - 2:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Last night the table view was completely unresponsive - I couldn't get it to show me anything.  I'll try again now.
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Stuart Staniford on November 19, 2005 - 2:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm getting the same symptom as last night.  When I follow your link, I get a little "Retrieving Data..." indicator, and then I never get any data.  I don't know if it's that their site is overloaded, or that they don't handle Safari correctly.
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Stuart Staniford on November 19, 2005 - 2:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Ah, I downloaded Firefox and it works in that - I can see data.
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Slippery Slope on November 19, 2005 - 2:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The Beyond 20/20 WDS web site is actually useful to me.  I was able to create a histogram chart of Saudi Arabian crude oil production by month (January 2002 - September 2005).  For the last month reported the crude oil production was 9,445 kb/d.  The peak month was 9,598 kb/d in November 2004.  By clicking the Unit, Product, Balance, Time and Country links, you can filter the contents of the table.  Then you can choose between the table view of the data and the chart view.  If you have further problems with the Beyond 20/20 browser, I think that I can give you a step by step method of achieving a particular result you desire.

I hope that OPEC and the IEC will begin reporting supply, inventory and demand statistics using this data.

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10 comments on A new data base appears

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