Statistics data is the number of
Cobblestones (credit units)
granted to hosts, participants and teams by the various BOINC projects.
This can be used for various purposes, such as:
-
Web sites that show statistics and leaderboards
for one or more BOINC projects.
Examples are listed at here.
- Dynamically-generated images
(typically used as message-board signatures)
that show user and/or team credit, possible across projects.
Examples are listed at here.
- Displays of current credit on cell phones and PDAs.
Displays that use colors to distinguish BOINC projects should use
these colors.
BOINC provides a flexible architecture for distributing statistics data,
with the goal of enabling new display applications.
The BOINC statistics data architecture
Project-specific data
Each BOINC project provides data in two forms:
- As
a set of downloadable files
(in a compressed XML format)
that contain the project's complete current statistics.
These files are typically updated once every 24 hours.
- As
a set of Web RPCs
that return an XML-format description of a given
participant's credit,
based on that participant's database ID.
Applications should access these data sources
as infrequently as possible,
to avoid imposing unnecessary load on project servers.
For example, a Web RPCs to get a particular participant's data
should made at most once per hour.
Aggregate data
A data aggregator is a service that collects XML files
from several projects,
and computes the totals for participants and hosts
(based on cross-project IDs)
across these projects.
This aggregate data is then exported in two ways:
- As
a set of downloadable files
(in a compressed XML format).
An example is at http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/stats/.
- As
a set of Web RPCs
that return an XML-format description of a given participant
or host's credit,
based on the cross-project ID.
Example:
http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/get_host.php?cpid=????
and
http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/get_host_tot.php?cpid=????
Application developers are encouraged to concentrate
on aggregate rather than per-project data.
This will encourage participants to join multiple projects,
and will make it possible for new projects to quickly get
many participants.
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