Possibilities - The Economic Bulletin Board

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THE ECONOMIC BULLETIN BOARD
---------------------------

*** From July 1990 Possibilities Newsletter ***
*** Copyright 1990 by eSoft, Inc.  All Rights Reserved ***

The Economic Bulletin Board
U.S. Department of Commerce's Source for Economic Information
by Alan Bechtold

Information is the name of the game in finance and economics, and the U.S. 
government is one of the world's largest sources of such information.  
Literally billions of dollars can be riding on the information that's 
provided on the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Bulletin Board (EBB)
24 hours a day.

Statistics on the current Gross National Product and late-breaking state-by-
state employment figures can have powerful effects on the stock market, 
money markets and even on the entire world economy.  Getting this 
information quickly is vital to the EBB's thousands of subscribers, who 
include stock market analysts, members of the financial press, investment 
brokers and anyone who seriously follows the financial news.

Many of the EBB's information files and bulletins are posted by the 
governmental agencies that release them -- as soon as they make the 
information available.

The EBB has been in operation since the middle of 1985.  The system was 
originally designed using RBBS PC software.  "It was actually my boss's 
idea," TBBS system designer Ken Rogers said.  "We chewed on the concept a 
little bit and then it was my responsibility to put the thing into motion -- 
to get it going, design the structure and set up the infrastructure of how 
we would maintain the system and get the information on it." Rogers and his 
technical assistant, Gary Newcomb, made the switch to TBBS Information 
Manager software in January.

"When we were running RBBS PC, we used two networked computers and 20 Alloy 
Slave Cards," said Newcomb, "to offer our users access to 20 incoming lines.  
With TBBS, we're now up to 32 incoming lines, all running on a single CPU.  
To say it's a lot easier to maintain is an understatement.  Simply 
eliminating the need for those Alloy cards -- twenty more things to break 
down or require frequent checking -- made the switch to TBBS worthwhile.

"We had really reached the limit of the slave card-based RBBS PC system," 
Rogers said.  "We tried running the 2 PCs connected as a single 20-line 
system but we kept having unexplainable problems, so we eventually pulled 
the two systems apart.  In the end, we were running mirror-image systems on 
each computer, one with 12 slave cards and the other with 8."

Newcomb has worked mostly with TBBS since he came on board with the project 
a little over a year ago.  "I was responsible for building the new system's 
menus and setting up all of the file areas, as well as implementing any 
changes we planned to make," Newcomb said.  "Ken decides what we need and 
how it should be done and I find a way to get it done."

"Our philosophy (when making the switch to TBBS) was to make the system 
match the RBBS PC system as closely as possible," Rogers said.  "We were 
fully aware that any amount of change on a system like ours carries with it 
the possibility of problems for the user."

The system's menus, for example, were purposefully designed so everything 
could be accessed as easily as possible.  Although they took tasteful 
advantage of TBBS' powerful ANSI graphics capabilities on the new system's 
menus, Rogers and Newcomb also offered an option for users to easily switch 
back to straight ASCII menus that closely matched the ones on the RBBS PC 
system.

"That's one of my favorite TBBS features -- the ability to make your menus 
look just the way you want them," said Newcomb.  "This allowed me to design 
a completely new system starting with menus that closely resembled the ones 
our users were already familiar with.  The hardest change we faced was 
converting the userlog."

Rogers agreed.  "The EBB is a subscription service relied upon by thousands 
of users for important information," he said.  "Simply asking everyone to 
re-register -- as some operators do when they switch software -- was out of 
the question.  We were faced with spending hundreds of man-hours manually 
re-entering everyone into the new system ourselves."

Fortunately Newcomb met a fellow TBBS system designer, Paul O'Keefe, at last
year's TBBS Symposium. Paul had already faced a similar conversion problem 
and solved it.  The solution was a Pascal program that automatically 
converted an RBBS PC userlog to a TBBS userlog.

"It worked 90%," Rogers said.  "There was still some manual editing needed, 
mostly because we used some account number functions on our RBBS PC system 
that the author of the program hadn't taken into account, but it still made 
the transition a breeze.

Similar userlog conversion programs can be found on the eSoft Support Board.  
Newcomb suggests that all TBBS system designers call the Support Board 
regularly.  "It's where I get a lot of good ideas and excellent help -- from 
the eSoft staff and from other TBBS system designers.  I call it 
religiously."

The EBB was designed as three basic areas: a Bulletins System, a Utilities 
System and a Files System.  The main menu offers straightforward access to 
each of these three areas.  There are also Main Menu commands to <L>eave a 
comment to the system operators, <S>ign off the system, read the system's 
<H>elp Files, view the system's <W>elcome Message, <K>ill a message, <P>age 
the operator for an online chat, <R>ead a message from the system's 
operators or turn <E>xpert Mode on or off.

The File System is loaded with economic information from numerous government 
agencies and departments.  More than 400 downloadable files offer users the 
latest releases from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of the 
Census, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to name but a few.  There is 
also late-breaking news on such subjects as the gross national product, the 
current employment situation, personal income, and the consumer price index.

The system also offers listings of new publications and data bases currently 
available from the Office of Business Analysis, the Bureau of Economic 
Analysis, the Bureau of the Census, and the National Technical Information 
Service, and summaries of economic news from the Department of Commerce.  
Other files analyze economic indicators and foreign trade data.  There is 
also a large list of special economic studies and reports.

Information that changes often is offered first in the Bulletins System.  
Some data is even offered in a Lotus 1-2-3-compatible format, allowing the 
users to download it directly into spreadsheets, then create their own 
graphs and manipulate the data at will.

The system is extremely popular with members of the press, economic 
statisticians and anyone interested in current late-breaking economic news 
and data.

A typical day on the EBBS is sometimes a bit different from other online 
information systems.  "Due to the nature of our information, some days are 
very slow," Rogers said.  "If there's not a major economic news release 
issued to the public on any given day, there might not be much going on for 
several hours at a time.  Then, one morning one Commerce Agency will issue a 
statement on the Gross National Product.  This is big news -- especially for 
the financial community.  Literally billions of dollars can be made or lost 
depending on that information.

"When information like that hits our system all of our lines are busy and 
everybody's hitting that one file.  When somebody drops off a line somebody 
else will pop in and it usually stays that way for several hours.  Later, 
more detailed information is released.  Just as the traffic is slowing a 
bit, it picks up again."

It's this cyclic surge of user access that made a 32-line TBBS Information 
Manager a necessity for the EBBS.  "Even if we had 64 lines," Rogers said, 
"my guess is they would all be going on a busy day.  That's why we were 
especially curious, once the new TBBS system was in place, to see what would 
happen to the system's performance when all 32 lines were busy.  It's 
remarkable.  It doesn't tax the system a bit.  We're running a 25Mhz 386 PC 
and it's a fast machine but, given what we've seen, we could easily run 45 
lines without any noticeable degradation of speed or performance."

The service is expanding rapidly.  "We've just announced a second system," 
Rogers said.  "This one is a mirror of the first, but offers access to six 
9600 bps lines."

One look at The EBBS would make you think it's been designed by dedicated 
computer professionals.  "Actually," Rogers says with a smile, "we're all 
re-tread economists here.  Of course, you can't deal with today's economics 
without a computer, so they certainly aren't new to us, but we actually have 
only one programmer on the staff and he's a mainframe programmer."

Indeed, the EBB's real strength is the information it provides.  The TBBS 
Information Manager makes it easier for Rogers and Newcomb to maintain that 
focus, freeing them from many of the daily problems and worries they used to 
face just keeping the system online.  That's what a good information manager 
is all about.

The Economic Bulletin Board is open to the public, 24 hours a day, seven 
days a week.  Users pay $35 per year to register, then online minutes are 
billed at twenty cents each (8 AM to Noon EST), fifteen cents (Noon to 6 
PM), or five cents off peak (6 PM to 8:30 AM and weekends).  Users may 
request a descriptive flier or register with MasterCard or Visa online or by 
voice.  For more information, call 202-377-1986.

- END -
PS0790-4
Rev. 7/90

Copyright (C) 1994 eSoft, Inc., All Rights Reserved.  Permission granted
to distribute this file in its entirety, without modification, to any
interested party.  Any other use requires the written permission of
eSoft, Inc.

IMPORTANT:  The information herein is subject to change without notice.
Please call or write to confirm factual information of importance to you
or your organization.

