Unable to retrieve indices from Wolfram data servers

Questions
,
1

I am running this code within the wolfram engine via command line: WeatherData[“Chicago”, “Temperature”]

and this is my output:

In[1]:= WeatherData[“Chicago”, “Temperature”] Installing data from Wolfram Research data server …Initializing WeatherData indices …Initializing WeatherData indices …Installing data from Wolfram Research data server …Initializing CityData indices …

Can someone explain to me why this function never returns an output from the servers and instead timesout eventually?

2

It isn’t working from in-house with 9.0.1 on an iMac. For right now, the simple explanation is
probably that the WeatherData database is down. Sorry.

Help menu - Internet Connectivity, Test Internet Connectivity works, so it isn’t the whole redundant server setup.

3

That seems to be the same for other data bases as well:

FinancialData["^DJI", "Members"]

Does not work either.

4

The simple answer is that the Raspberry Pi build is currently *allowed* to run more functionality than it will succeed at completing. Under ideal networking conditions, some of the curated data calls will succeed. They’re more likely to succeed if they’re run a second time after the first failure. They’re far more likely to succeed on a Raspberry Pi model B than a model A because of the increased memory. They’re also more likely to succeed if you follow the command with a semicolon (though it takes an absurdly long time):

In[1]:= today = WeatherData["Chicago", "Temperature"];                         

Installing data from Wolfram Research data server ....
Initializing WeatherData indices ....
Initializing WeatherData indices ....
Installing data from Wolfram Research data server ....
Initializing CityData indices ....
Initializing CityData indices ....
Initializing CityData indices ....
Initializing CityData indices ....
Initializing CityData indices ....
Installing data from Wolfram Research data server ....

In[2]:= today                                                                  

Out[2]= -2.9 degrees Celsius

The distribution is still an experimental pilot release and should not be viewed as a commercial-grade Mathematica product at this time. That said, we’re doing some significant performance optimization and future versions should behave a lot more consistently with the main product. With problems like these, I recommend making WolframAlpha do your heavy lifting for you:

In[10]:= today2 = WolframAlpha["current temperature in Chicago",{{"Result",1}, "QuantityData"}]   

Out[10]= 27 degrees Fahrenheit
5

Bruce,

Thanks for the resonpse! I’m in awe at what the language can accomplish. Can’t wait to the future updates, and final product.

  • Derek
6

Dear Alex et al,

I don’t think that

The simple answer is that the Raspberry Pi build is currently *allowed* to run more functionality than it will succeed at completing.

is the answer to the question why we cannot connect to the data servers. Neither the weather data nor the financial data works on OSX (or Linux or Windows). I am using it in a class full of students on all sorts of systems and none of us can access the servers. We can also not reach them from the Raspberry Pis.

Apparently Bruce had the same problem on a Mac.

M.

7

I can’t reproduce that problem on my end. I recommend you contact technical support if you’re having problems accessing this functionality on a commercial version of Mathematica.

8

Dear Alex,

does

FinancialData["^DJI", "Members"]

work on your computer (not Raspberry)?

9

There’s multiple, conflated issues here.

  1. The first issue is about the capabilties of the Raspberry Pi version. This is an issue for example if you want to use WeatherData with the Raspberry Pi. WeatherData Expressions such as:

WeatherData[“Chicago”, “Temperature”]

should work for you on a desktop version of Mathematica, but may not work on the raspberry Pi version. Contact Wolfram Technical Support if WeatherData doesn’t work for you on the desktop version.

  1. Certain FinancialData queries do not work, such as FinancialData[“^DJI”, “Members”].

This is the result of Yahoo Finance’s API no longer being able to serve the information. There are many things about the ^DJI ticker symbol that Yahoo Finance can no longer serve. See this response for more information. (http://developer.yahoo.com/forum/General-Discussion-at-YDN/Dow-Jones-Average-Error/1283975525000-e462d312-827e-3316-900e-c85f668f587d)

10

Dear Sean,

thanks. That was helpful! That means that

data = FinancialData[#, "Price", {{2000}, {2010}, "Day"}] & /@ {"AA", "AXP", "BA", "BAC", "CAT", "CSCO", "CVX", "DD", 
   "DIS", "GE", "HD", "HPQ", "IBM", "INTC", "JNJ", "JPM", "KO", "MCD",
    "MMM", "MRK", "MSFT", "PFE", "PG", "T", "TRV", "UNH", "UTX", "VZ",
    "WMT", "XOM"}

still works, which it does! Problem solved.

M

11

This post solutions are relevant: How to get FinancialData[] Exchange Rates ?