5. EViews 8.1 Supplement
EViews 8.1 is a free upgrade to EViews 8 that offers important new features which improve
communication with users and enhance connectivity to external data sources and programs.
What’s New in EViews 8.1
New Messaging System
EViews 8.1 introduces a messaging system that allows us to communicate news and impor-
tant information to you on EViews startup. With this new system, you’ll never miss an
important notification. The messages are designed to be non-intrusive, and you can adjust
their frequency or opt out entirely.
See “Messaging System” on page 3 for additional discussion.
Expanded Database Connectivity
EViews 8.1 Enterprise Edition expands connectivity to external data sources by adding built-
in support for two important data sources:
• Bloomberg Reference Data Services market and economic data.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration’s database of energy and related economic
data.
EViews Enterprise users can now search, browse, fetch, and link to Bloomberg and EIA data
using the familiar EViews database interface.
For additional detail on these new data sources, see“Database Connectivity” on page 5.
Enhanced External Application and Data Connectivity
EViews 8.1 Enterprise Edition significantly improves your ability to access EViews data from
external programs and to develop interfaces that seamlessly connect EViews to external
data:
• The new EViews Database Objects (EDO) Library gives EViews Enterprise customers
the ability to access data objects held inside EViews databases and workfiles from
within an external application (“External Access to EViews Data” on page 15).
• EViews 8.1 offers an EViews Database Extension (EDX) interface for developers who
wish to provide EViews Enterprise Edition access to their database formats. Any exter-
nal data source that implements this interface can be opened directly from within
EViews Enterprise Edition and used just like an EViews database (“Support for Cus-
tom Database Connectivity” on page 16).
7. Messaging System
EViews 8.1 introduces a messaging system that allows us to communicate news and impor-
tant information to you on EViews startup.
EViews will now look for and display a message from us upon startup. These messages will
inform you of EViews related news items (such as info on a special EViews event) or more
important information (such as the availability of a patch, a new add-in, or a new version of
EViews).
The popup messages are designed to be non-intrusive and will dismiss themselves after a
short period of time. You may dismiss the messages explicitly by clicking the close button on
the message window or you can wait until the message self-dismisses. (Note that the last
high priority message will continue to appear every time EViews is run until the user manu-
ally clicks the close button to dismiss it.)
If you wish to change the frequency or suppress the popup messages, you may change the
message preferences in the general options dialog. Click on General Options/Environment/
Startup to display the startup options settings:
8. 4— Messaging System
and select either Show Important Only to show only high priority messages (no news) or
Disable to turn off messaging entirely.
9. Database Connectivity
EViews 8.1 Enterprise Edition broadens its connectivity to external data sources by adding
built-in support for two important data sources:
• Bloomberg Reference Data Services market and economic data (“Bloomberg Data” on
page 5).
• U.S. Energy Information Administration database of energy and related economic data
(“U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Data” on page 8).
Enterprise Edition customers can now search, browse, and fetch the data in these sources
using the familiar database interface.
Bloomberg Data
EViews 8.1 Enterprise Edition users may now use the standard EViews database interface to
connect to Bloomberg Reference Data Services extensive library of market and economic
data.
You can search through Bloomberg securities and fields from within EViews to quickly
locate the data you need, then fetch the data directly into an EViews workfile without the
need for intermediate files or formats.
To access Bloomberg data from EViews, you must have:
1. The Bloomberg Professional application software installed on your machine
2. A currently active subscription to Bloomberg and be able to log into the Bloomberg
Professional terminal on your machine.
In addition, Bloomberg connectivity requires the Enterprise Edition of EViews 8.1.
For detail on Bloomberg Reference Data Services please see the Bloomberg website http://
www.bloomberg.com/enterprise/data/reference-data-services.
The following discussion offers a quick introduction to use EViews to connect with Bloom-
berg data. See our whitepaper: Bloomberg Database Extension for EViews (available from
our website www.eviews.com/download/download.html) for additional detail and discus-
sion.
To start, you must open a database window to Bloomberg by selecting File/Open Data-
base… from the main EViews menus, then selecting Bloomberg Database from the Data-
base/File type dropdown menu. The following dialog should appear:
10. 6— Database Connectivity
In most cases, you should simply be able to click on OK to get started. Clicking on OK
should bring up a Bloomberg database window.
The database window represents a connection to Bloomberg data.
The first step in retrieving data is to find a series that we would like to fetch. Click on
Browse to bring up the Bloomberg database custom search dialog:
11. Bloomberg Data—7
• The Search Text field allows you to enter one or more keywords to search for. The
‘Market Sector’ field lets you restrict the search to a particular Bloomberg market sec-
tor. (If you are using a Bloomberg keyboard you can change the market sector field by
pressing a Yellow Key).
• The Items to Return field specifies how many items to return from the search. Bloom-
berg is very effective at selecting relevant results so only a small number of results is
generally needed.
• The Field Name and Overrides boxes allow you to specify what particular informa-
tion about a security you would like to fetch. By default EViews will fetch the field
“PX_LAST” without any overrides.
For example, we can simply type “us gdp” into the Search Text box and press OK. You
should return to the database window with the following search results displayed:
12. 8— Database Connectivity
Any series displayed in the database may be accessed in the usual fashion.
Limitations
Note that the highest resolution of data that can be fetched by EViews is one minute interval
data. EViews does not currently support reading tick data for a security.
Further, the Bloomberg database extension for EViews that powers the connection only sup-
ports Bloomberg Desktop API configurations (Bloomberg Server API and B-Pipe configura-
tions are not supported).
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Data
The EIA database is a large collection of free and publicly available energy and related eco-
nomic data provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
EViews Enterprise Edition supports both online access to EIA data via the EIA web server as
well as offline access to data downloaded in the EIA Bulk File format.
13. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Data—9
Online EIA Database
To open the EIA online database, simply select File/Open Database… from the main
EViews menu, then select EIA Online Database from the Database/File type dropdown
menu:
The server specification will be automatically filled in with the EIA server address
api.eia.gov which you should not need to change. The database will always be opened with
the name “eia”. Click on OK to proceed.
Use of the EIA online service is free but requires registration. The first time you attempt to
open the EIA online database you will be asked to enter an API Key obtained from the EIA:
Please enter your API key then click on OK. The key will be saved as a user specific setting
in your EViews “.ini” file. If you need to change the key at a later time, use View/Prefer-
ences… from the EViews database menus to bring up the dialog again so you can modify
your settings.
When you click on OK, EViews will open a standard database window:
14. 10— Database Connectivity
The EIA database connection supports a custom browser window for navigating through the
EIA data. Click on Browse to open the custom browser window. The standard database win-
dow will be minimized and the EIA browser window will open:
The browser window displays the data available within the database as a set of folders,
where each folder may contain additional folders or a list of series available for download-
ing. Clicking on a folder moves you into that folder and adds the folder to the path displayed
at the top of the window:
15. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Data—11
You can return to the previous folder by clicking on the “..” folder icon at the top of the list.
You can also move directly to any folder within the current path by clicking on the path
component at the top of the window.
Any series contained in the folder may be manipulated following the usual EViews interface
conventions
• Double click on a series to bring up detailed information on the series
• Drag and drop series or copy and paste them into an EViews workfile or database to
fetch the current data from the server (drag with the right mouse button or use Paste
Special to create links)
When you have finished working with the browser, simply close the browser window to
restore the regular EViews database window.
Offline EIA Databases
EViews also allows you to work offline with data downloaded from the EIA using the EIA
bulk download facility. The bulk download feature allows you to fetch all series and cate-
gory information from an entire EIA data set into a single local file. Downloading an entire
bulk file is generally much more efficient than fetching a large number of series one at a
time. Once the file has been downloaded, you can navigate within the dataset and bring
data into EViews without reconnecting to the EIA servers.
To download a bulk file, open the browser window of the EIA online database, right click on
a data set, then select Download Bulk File…:
16. 12— Database Connectivity
A dialog will appear giving instructions for downloading the file and preparing it for use by
EViews:
Clicking on the download link will open your default web browser and start a download of
the file. The bulk file is compressed in “.zip” format. You will need to use an unzipping util-
ity to extract the single “.txt” file contained within the zip file. Finally, rename the “.txt” file
to “.eia” so EViews can tell that the file contains data in EIA bulk file format rather than a
generic text file.
Once the bulk file has been prepared, use File/Open Database… and browse to the file or
simply drag and drop the file onto EViews to open it. The caption on the window indicates
that you are working with a local file. Otherwise, the interface behaves the same as when
working with online data:
17. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Data—13
Note that some EIA data sets are large (hundreds of megabytes of uncompressed data).
When working with large files you may see a delay as the file is opened since EViews must
completely scan the entire bulk file to find all series and category information stored in the
file. Subsequent operations should be fast since all data is stored locally on the machine.
19. External Application and Data Connectivity
EViews 8.1 Enterprise Edition now allows you to access EViews data from external programs
and to develop interfaces that seamlessly connect EViews to external data:
• The EViews Database Objects (EDO) Library gives EViews Enterprise customers the
ability to access data objects held inside EViews databases and workfiles from within
an external application (“External Access to EViews Data” on page 15).
• EViews 8.1 offers EViews Database Extension (EDX) interface for developers who
wish to provide EViews Enterprise Edition access to their database formats. Any exter-
nal data source that implements this interface can be opened directly from within
EViews Enterprise Edition and used just like an EViews database (“Support for Cus-
tom Database Connectivity” on page 16).
External Access to EViews Data
The EViews Database Objects (EDO) Library is an EViews Enterprise Edition feature that
provides access to data objects held inside EViews databases and workfiles from within an
external application.
The library consists of a set of COM objects exported by EViews that can easily be used in a
variety of development environments such as Microsoft .NET and Visual Basic for Applica-
tions (VBA).
The EDO API provides full read and write access to EViews databases, as well as read-only
access to EViews workfiles. The interface provides access to both the observation values and
the attributes of an object. In contrast, the EViews OLEDB interface offers data reading sup-
port but not write operations nor object attributes.
The EDO library supports reading and writing of the following EViews data objects:
• Numeric series (including series containing dates)
• Alpha series (containing character data)
• Scalars
• Vectors
• Matrices
• Strings
• String Vectors
The library does not currently support access to data within structured EViews objects such
as equations or models.
20. 16— External Application and Data Connectivity
Use of the EDO library requires that a machine is registered with a valid EViews Enterprise
Version license.
For additional details, see the EViews Data Objects Library whitepaper, available from our
website www.eviews.com/download/download.html.
Support for Custom Database Connectivity
EViews offers built-in support for a handful of foreign database formats (e.g. DataStream,
EcoWin, Haver, FRED, etc.), providing users direct access to data in these formats via the
standard EViews database interface.
For data in unsupported database formats, users can resort to ODBC (if an ODBC driver was
available), use an intermediate file format (such as XLS, CSV or HTML), or employ the Win-
dows clipboard to exchange data. These approaches are less convenient than working with
the standard interface, and there are a number of limitations, including the inability to
obtain additional attributes such as source, units, etc. alongside observation values and the
fact that data brought into EViews using these approaches cannot be "linked” back to the
source to allow for automatic refreshes when a workfile is loaded.
To overcome these limitations, EViews 8.1 introduces the EViews Database Extension (EDX)
Interface which allows any external data source that implements this interface to be opened
from within EViews Enterprise Edition and used just like a database with built-in support:
Programmers who implement a database extension for an external database format can
extend EViews so that:
• an EViews user can ask what objects the external database contains
• an EViews user can read data objects from the external database
• an EViews user can write data objects to the external database
21. Support for Custom Database Connectivity—17
• an EViews user can browse through the contents of the external database using a cus-
tom graphical interface developed specifically for the data source
Using EDX, a developers can offer EViews access to an external database that is indistin-
guishable from built-in access to data sources. Notably, EViews built-in support for connect-
ing to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on-line databases was developed
using an EDX interface to the EIA API.
More precisely, EDX is a set of COM interfaces. Supporting a new format involves creating a
small library (usually housed in a DLL) that contains COM objects that implement these
interfaces. The library can be developed in many different programming environments
including native C++ and Microsoft .NET. These COM objects are used by EViews to inter-
act with the underlying database.
22. 18— External Application and Data Connectivity
For details and extensive examples of the EDX interface, please see the whitepaper EViews
Database Extension Interface Release x.x, available from our website www.eviews.com/
download/download.html.
23. Index
B
Bloomberg data I:5
C
Custom database I:16
D
Data
access EViews data I:15
custom database support I:16
EViews Database Extension (EDX) I:16
EViews Database Objects (EDO) I:15
Database
support for custom I:16
E
EDO (EViews Database Objects) I:15
EDX interface I:16
EIA data I:8
Enterprise Edition I:5
EViews Database Extension (EDX) interface I:16
M
Messaging system I:3
P
Popup messages I:3
U
U.S. Energy Information Administration data I:8
