SUMMARY

The market economy of Russia is very heterogeneous, both in terms of business attractiveness of various commodity categories, and the degree of entrepreneurial activity in various regions of the country. The information system proposed below allows to identify the commodity groups most demanded on the Russian market, as well as to determine the regional differences in the intensity of business activity. It makes possible trend analysis (starting in February 1995) and tracking other developments in the entrepreneurial activities in the Russian marketplace.

USER'S GUIDE

The system is organized in three tiers (levels). The first (master) "page" of the system allows to choose the time range for the indicator analysis (see the Section "Time Range"), to select the type of the indicator to be analyzed, and, by pressing the button Submit Query, to activate the next (second) "page" of the system. In addition, within the first "page", a user can obtain commentaries to the system and the initial data that can be used outside the system (for the restrictions on use of this data, see the Section Copyright).

The time range

Statistics is gathering and processing since February 1995, so the least left margin may be set to 9502.

The default value is all the period of statistics processing.

Having selected one of index types and pressed Submit button, you'll get the page of relevant subtypes and their rating. To get the graph you'll have to check one or more subtypes and submit the query on the second page.

The first four out of six types of indicators shown on the first page can be selected in one of the two options: 1)absolute value of the indicator (amount), or 2)daily rate of growth of the indicator (index). This selection affects the graphical representation of the indicators. In the first case, the graphs of absolute values are constructed, and in the second - the graphs of growth rates are built.

The list of commodity groups:

        audio-video
        chemicals
        computers
        construction
        consume
        energy
        real estate
        food
        food.drinks
        food.sweet
        householding
        info services
        machinery
        medicine
        metals
        money
        orgtech
        software
        stocks
        tobacco
        transport

Individual values of this indicator for a given commodity group correspond to the daily numbers of communications directed to this newsgroup. The index of these values then yields the daily growth rate.

List of regions:

Russian's regions

        Moscow
        St.Petersburg
        Ural
        Center
        West Siberia
        Volga
        Volga-Vyatka
        East Siberia
        Far East
        North Caucaus
        North-West
        Black Earth Zone

Ex-USSR regions

        Armenia
        Azerbaijan
        Belorussia
        Georgia
        Kazakhstan
        Kirgizia
        Latvia
        Litva
        Moldavia
        Tajikistan
        Turkmenia
        Uzbekistan
        Ukrain
        Estonia

The assignment of individual communications to appropriate regions is based on the name of the second-level domain in the address of the sender. For example, messages with return addresses containing *.msk.su, *.msu.ru will be referred to the region of Moscow. Communications with undetermined regional identity are grouped into the category UNKNOWN. Moreover, there are two groups of communications with the first -level domain names "org" and "com" respectively in their return addresses which usually originate in foreign countries other than the former Soviet republics. To simplify the analysis, the regions of Russia with low information activity are grouped under the heading "rest of Russia"; the similar non-Russian regions form the group called "rest of world". Individual values of this indicator for a given economic region correspond to the daily numbers of communications originated in the given region. The index of these values measures the daily growth rate.

Executing Submit Query on the first page opens the second page of the system on the screen. The second page displays the table containing the following attributes of the indicator selected by the user:

- the list of commodity groups or regions (depending on the type of the indicator chosen); for the indicator Avg. traveling time, the second page presents its graph;

- in the list, individual groups or regions are placed in the descending order in accordance with their ratings (i.e. commodity groups or regions in the top portion of the list have higher ratings than those placed below them).

Column #ADS

- for each commodity group or region, the value of the parameter used to calculate the rating;

- this parameter is taken to be equal to the total number of communications within each individual commodity group or region during the time range chosen by the user (for changes in the time range chosen, see below).

Column LMI

- for each commodity group or region, rate of growth in the indicator selected on the first page during the last month, calculated as (A(t)/A(t-1) - 1)/100%, where A is the total number of communications in a given month, t - the last month of the selected time range, t-1 - the month immediately preceding the last month in the chosen time range.

For some types of data, monthly rates of growth (column "ind") are not determined and, therefore, are absent on the second page (indicators 4 - 6 in the list on the first page of the system).

The second page allows: 1) to rearrange the list of commodity groups or regions for the time range entered by the user; 2) to view the graphs of changes in a given indicator for desired commodity groups or regions.

To reevaluate the ratings of commodity groups or regions, one must adjust appropriately the time range found on the second page and press the button Submit Query. While doing this, no commodity groups or regions may be highlighted.

If at least one commodity group or region is highlighted, pressing Submit Query opens the third page of the system that allows to view the time graphs of the highlighted entries (for the selected time range). If necessary, the time range for the graphs can be changed directly from the second page (to do this, the user should enter the desired new value for the time range in the window "time range").

The third page only displays graphs and does not contain any commands. Return to the previous page is accomplished by the standard methods of the Internet browser (for example, in Netscape, it is done by pressing the button Back or selecting the appropriate entry in the GO menu).

The data collection

This job is being done at the news server of Infoteka Ltd, Novosibirsk, Russia (news.itfs.nsk.su).

Monthly routine (runs on the 7-th of next month):

    - `inverts' the raw data files to produce the files containing info
      about articles (advertisments) issued on the same day;

    - factorizes the inverted data on the region basis

    - smooths some of the factorized data on the time parameter:
      the number of ads. per day is set equal to the average
      during the current and 6 preceeding days.

    - archives processed raw data files.


    The resulting are 5 files:

    - # of ads. in each group per day (#groups columns, #days rows)

    - # of ads. from each region per day (#regions columns, #days rows)

    - monthly average of ads. in each group from each region
      (#regions columns, #groups rows); this file is not used in plotting

    - # of active hosts in each region per day (#regions columns, #days rows)

    - # of active hosts in each region since the beginning of statistics
      (#regions columns, #days rows); this data is not smoothed.


The visualization routune is implemented as a SHELL script which does
the following:

    - builds command file and appropriate source data file for `gnuplot'
      based on the request from www browser and files described above

    - runs `gnuplot' and `ppmtogif' -- the convertor of `gnuplot' output
      to GIF file.

    Having executed the script, http daemon sends a link to the GIF file
    back to the www browser.


    GIFs aged >= 24 hours are deleted by `cron' command every midnight.