In Reply to: Data Dump…. You're not pulling my leg, are you? (more) posted by Hans M Guy - HMG in MAss on August 7, 2002 at 1:44 PM:
Maybe I just don't understand this proposal, but it strikes me as simpler if we just had a utility that would let us download the URLs of the bills on our account. Yes, it would be a chore to bring up all those bill reports one at a time, and copy information from them into a spreadsheet or data table, but at least it would be simple and straightforward.
I sometimes wish I had copied all the URLs every time I entered bills, but I didn't think of it. But if I could get the URLs now, I could build up my own "local" database fairly easily. Time consuming perhaps, but not difficult.
However, if Hank (or Dr. ASK) is offering to do the "buildup" for us, then I'm all in favor of it.
Once I get one data dump, I could start keeping my own local transaction file, so that I could keep the local database current without any more data from WG. I probably wouldn't want a dump more often than about once every six months, just to be sure that errors aren't creeping in.
As I say, I may have completely misunderstood what everyone is proposing. But if it works the way I think it would, then it sounds like a marvelous idea.
CM