Exactly . . . except this is a side project to porting QLNet to SQLCLR. Thank you for asking . . . the thought had crossed my mind more background info would be helpful. After all, why would one pay for data freely available at the FRB website?
Test data was needed for my SQLCLR project and the Federal Reserve Bank is a good source. I didn't need everything they have. However, it turned out all FRB statistical releases are fairly consistent being distributed on top of the
SDMX standard. Since I already built an automated process to download and extract FRB data according to that standard, I figured why not do all of them.
Here are the main reasons
FRB_SR is a good value:
1) The FRB website limits downloads in a fashion that is a bit cumbersome and disorganized.
2) The FRB data downloads are not in a readily useable format.
3) The FRB and SDMX folks, being (quasi) government agencies, have a tendency to be a little careless about making "unannounced changes" . . . four times in the last six months . . . which are show stoppers. Adjusting for this is a relatively easy fix for yours truly since it is a simple code change . . . and I'm used to it.
)4 ROI . . .
FRB_SR is cost effective. Over the past 15 years I have designed, developed, maintained, debugged and reverse engineered countless data applications and systems . . . based on my experience an organization will spend thousands PER MONTH to built and administer a similar process.
So, the fee is not for the data but for doing the ETL process, packaging it in a real database, and distribution.
