6 SIMBAD usage

   
6.1 Charging policy

SIMBAD is a charged service. The telnet access is protected by userid/password, and the WWW access is protected either by IP address or by password.

Users have to register, and get a userid/password from the CDS staff (or from the U.S. agent for American users).

In the U.S. there is no invoicing for the end-user because the charges are covered globally by NASA for all U.S. users.

In Europe, the same situation is also true for users from ESO and ESA member states, thanks to an agreement signed with European Southern Observatory and ESA Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (since January 1995).

Special arrangements also exist or are currently being negotiated with other countries, including Canada, Australia, and Japan.

6.2 Usage statistics

There are currently (November 1999) some 7000 user accounts from 64 different countries. The development of the WWW access makes difficult to keep precise track of the individual usage statistics, but the global statistics show that the world wide interest for accessing the SIMBAD database continues to increase regularly over the years.

The number of SIMBAD queries evolved from about 30 000 per month in 1997 to about 100 000 per month in 1999. About 50% of the queries come through the client/server mode.

A mirror copy of SIMBAD has been established at CfA (Harvard) for convenience of US users, and about one third of the queries are currently processed on the mirror site (including name resolving activities for the ADS and major US NASA archives). The mirror copy is managed by CDS and updated every night.