steve wrote:Which historical data is still unavailable? And if it's being saved to a database, why does it need to be 'historical' anyway?
OK, I have waited a few days t reply to your message ... so I could cool off somewhat.
I really hate when you take such a defensive attitude when someone comments on your software or lack of functions (fortunately, the designer of the other weather software you seem to compare Cumulus to, has been requested and has accepted to take a more constructive approach)...
All the data produced by Cumulus is in the flat file format - very inconvenient when trying to use that data with any types of modern charting scripts...
There have been many discussions about the use of a database ... but, still, Cumulus does not offer 'direct' access to a database, that is without 'jumping through hoops' of PHP scripts and CRON jobs and other hack type of ways to get the data where it is needed, inside an online database - fortunately, Weather Display has a small utility called 'wdmysql.exe' which, once setup (access to the database, data to include in the database, etc.), will automatically upload, at programmable schedules, all the data to an online database - oh, that small utility is automatically started a few seconds after Weather Display has started and without any additional action required of the user.
With that said/written, using the data from a database that contains data from a personal weather station is much more accurate than getting the 'regurgitated' data from Weather Underground - that
is the main benefit!
As Manuel pointed out, a database can also contain a lot more valuable data (such as UV, solar, etc.) than the limited data Weather Underground can (and will ever) provide and the database data is available/produced in a much more timely manner.
As Duke pointed out, no hourly historical data file is 'directly' produced by Cumulus.
You indicated that webtags can be used to produced all the data need - again, this is not the 'direct' way - it is a hack (a way around the absence of a 'direct' access to a database) where most people are very uncomfortable in using PHP, judging by the number of requests for assistance when someone tries to deal with the creation, production and updating of a database.
The '
WU-Graphs' are using data from Weather Underground and/or data from the Weather Display produced database
as well as one flat file produced by Weather Display ... for the hourly results - if that option is not activated or if the required flat file is not available then the hourly graphics are not displayed.
A few years back, after many hours of modifications (to eradicate as many as possible the error and warning messages) I was able to adapt the WU-Graphs script to fit within one of my Cumulus web pages - the '[link removed]' script has been using the data from both Weather Underground
and the Weather Display produced database (although the database is not updated on a regular basis)
as well as the data from the the Weather Display hourly produced flat file.
Note: It has been my understanding (from reading previous posts) that adding code to access a MySQL database would require the purchase of a distribution license. As I recommended/suggested so many times, the support for the free version (or what you call the donation version) of Cumulus has long passed - what would be needed now would be for your to concentrate on a shareware (paid for) version of Cumulus where facilities such as access to a MySQL database would be built into Cumulus (or as a companion utility).