Thanks for the response Dave!

I'm really confused then. I see on other sites (for example, http://www.boincstats.com/ ) that have stats for WCG which seem to actually post several minutes before the hour! So you can see your stats updated before the WCG site even starts processing! That can't be possible.

Any comment?

Thanks,

dreplogle

The stats process starts at 00:06, 06:06, 12:06, 18:06 UTC each day (it is scheduled via cron). The six minute delay is to make sure that any issues slight differences in time between the servers does not impact the stats. Six minutes is more then enough (all servers sync with a time server so it should be negigible but if the time server goes down or a new firewall rule prevents communications and we don't notice for a short period this makes sure that the stats are correct even if a minor time difference occurs.)

The first step is to actually extract the data from the BOINC and UD databases and do some pre-processing. The site is not marked as unavailable during this time. This has variation in how long it takes to execute and that is why the 'start time' from the members perspective varies. The second step is to actually load this data into the website and it is during this time that you get the unavailable message.

We are planning to improve the stats part of the site in 1Q 2006. Part of this will be displaying new information and some of this will be improving the performance. There are a couple of places where the performance is not what it could be so we will be fixing that and this should improve the experience.

Kevin --

Thanks for clarifying the process. I don't understand, however, what happened the night of Jan. 3/4 though. The second phase in which we cannot log in didn't start until at least 00:27 UTC. It didn't complete until around 00:47 which is much later than the norm which has been between about 00:22 and 00:30 each evening. Tonight's update was complete at just about 00:27.