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INTERNATIONAL TRADE DATA NETWORK

Chafee Center for International Business
Bryant University - Smithfield, RI  02917-1284 USA
www.itdn.net (Phone: 1.401.232.6407)

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Questions and Answers

How do I access ITDN data and servers?

ITDN data is accessed by simply inserting HTML code, provided by ITDN, directly into your own web page(s). No knowledge of HTML or programming is required.

Why would I want to go through the effort of pasting your code into my own website rather than just linking to your site or others?

When individuals access your website, you don't want to send them elsewhere to view data. You want data displayed on your site using your logo, graphics, fonts, color schemes, etc. Other reasons include:

• People are more web literate than in the past
• You want a consistent look and feel on your site
• Frames can lock a user into an external site
• Accessibility is better for handicapped individuals
• Your site becomes more marketable - credit goes to you

Will your code slow my servers down?

As a general rule of thumb, the answer here is "no". All data maintenance, processing and manipulation is performed by servers at the ITDN hub. Your servers will do no additional work other than submit HTML requests to ITDN servers. ITDN uses top shelf Compaq and Cisco hardware to service requests from partner sites.

If there is a bottleneck on the Internet, however, your users might notice a delay in data retrieval. ITDN is a "tier 1" service provider with direct connections to the Internet backbone, but circumstances may arise that are beyond our control.

What about reliability of your servers?

In the past ten years, ITDN has experienced uptime of greater than 99.9%.

Will accessing your servers reduce the security of my servers?

No data is sent to your servers - only the client receives data that is requested by forms residing on your server(s).

ITDN uses state of the art, hardware-based firewalls (Cisco PIX), two virus scanning products, router ingress and egress filtering, and other ISP tools to monitor network activity that protect our systems as well as that of your clients.

When I paste your code into my web page, there is no formatting. How do I change this?

You can easily change formatting such as font and color by one of the three methods below:

• Use external style sheet files
• Use inline style formatting
• Use deprecated font and color HTML 3.x tags

You cannot, however, change any form definitions, elements, or their values. For example, if an item in a pick list is "South America", you cannot change it to "S. America". If you do so, your users will not be able to locate information on "South America".

How will I be informed of updates?

ITDN will periodically make changes to HTML code that accesses ITDN databases and tables. More than likely, changes are a result of end user feedback, or because ITDN has new data sets that we want to make available to your end users. ITDN will first classify an update issuance based upon the table below:

• Low Priority

  Impacts only visual aspects of forms on your web site
  No time frame for implementation

• Medium Priority

  Adds additional features or disables features for your end users
  Recommended that updates be implemented as soon as possible

• High Priority

  Generally involves system stability or security issues on ITDN servers
  Mandatory updates with ITDN reserving the right to shut end user features off if not implemented ASAP

Because ITDN code has been Internet enabled for more than 10 years without incident and with more than 99.99% uptime, it is expected that most updates will be "low" and occasionally "medium" priority. As a rule, "low" and "medium" priority updates will provide a better experience for your end users which will result in more repeat traffic being driven to your web site.

Once an update has been classified by ITDN, you will be notified as specified below:

• Low Priority

  Notification via email: follow-up voice contact probably within 4 weeks

• Medium Priority

  Notification via email and then voice if necessary within 2 weeks

• High Priority

  Notification via email and voice ASAP

 

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Last Update: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:09:13 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)