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Fetching data from Statistics Canada is painfully slow

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2025 2:25 pm
by random_user
First: thanks to the EViews team for adding the Statistics Canada data connectivity feature. It's pretty handy to have!

But, at the moment, its usefulness is severely limited by the fact that it takes a very long time for me to fetch data from it. I will share some details below about that.

Code: Select all

mode quiet %data = "INSERT SERIES HERE (SUPPRESSED)" tic table clock !n = 1 For %1 {%data} fetch(db=statcan) {%1} clock(!n,1) = !n clock(!n,2) = @toc !n = !n+1 Next delete df* 'Fetch a second time: tic table clock2 !n = 1 For %1 {%data} fetch(db=statcan) {%1} clock2(!n,1) = !n clock2(!n,2) = @toc !n = !n+1 Next


In this example, I fetched 148 series and it took 26 minutes!

What's interesting is that once the data is fetched, fetching it again shortly after time takes very little time (6.4 seconds).

Is this normal? Is there anything that could be done?

Thanks!

Re: Fetching data from Statistics Canada is painfully slow

Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2025 3:03 pm
by EViews Gareth
Its probably just a really large download that StatCan is sending. The reason it is fast the second is that we cache it.

Re: Fetching data from Statistics Canada is painfully slow

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:20 am
by random_user
Thanks for the quick response. I understand it may be a very large download, but if there's anything that can be done to make it smaller (or download faster) in the future, that would make the feature much more helpful.

For example, in my case, all these series were being downloaded from the very same table. So, it seems like if an entire table is being downloaded, it's being downloaded repeatedly and unnecessarily? Maybe something to look into....

Re: Fetching data from Statistics Canada is painfully slow

Posted: Mon May 05, 2025 1:13 pm
by random_user
Follow-up question: could the data description also be added fetched?

For example, it would be nice to see a description of the series added as a series attribute.