General description

The UN Common Database (UNCDB) for statistics is a wide-ranging database which covers all countries and areas and selected series from more than 30 specialized international data sources.

The UNCDB uses a Web browser interface to access the statistical series and descriptions of the international sources and definitions used in compiling the data. The series can be accessed alphabetically, by sources or by topics.

The UNCDB has been developed to meet the demand for comprehensive international data at one Internet site. It draws selectively on statistics from throughout the UN system and brings them together using a common platform and interface, and global statistical standards. It contains more than eight million data elements in more than 300 statistical series. In most cases time series are available from 1970 or 1980 and many series are disaggregated to show underlying distributions.

The UNCDB is unique among large Web databases in providing for each series comprehensive footnotes and meta-information on sources and definitions. Because a true relational database underlies the Web interface, new data and meta-information are available to users as soon as they are entered. Among the main data sources are the Statistics Division's own databases in merchandise trade, national accounts, demography and population, energy, status of women and industrial commodities production; and statistics from the Population Division, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Project Link, FAO, ILO, IMF, ITU, OECD, UNESCO, WHO, WIPO, World Bank and World Tourism Organization, among others.

The UNCDB also provides technical definitions and standards verbatim from their original sources as approved by an oversight inter-governmental body. New tools are used to fully integrate this meta-information with the statistics.

The UNCDB is fully Web-enabled for access using a standard browser such as Internet Explorer or Navigator. You can instantly view selected data or country profiles, compile graphs and distributions of selected series, calculate certain derived measures and export data to your desktop in several popular formats for further analysis. You can also view key series compiled in country profiles covering a variety of economic and social issues. Users can browse through the series in a single consolidated list, or list series by source or by topic. Single series (many with substantial disaggregation) for up to ten countries can be chosen and immediately viewed in HTML. For more than one series and country, the user has several options using "Advanced Data Selection": retrieval and viewing in Excel (most small queries take only a few seconds to process and Excel can be launched on demand within the program), or export as Excel or database files.

The UNCDB is a unique statistical resource of the UN system. More series and sources will be added by the Statistics Division as experience is gained and on the basis of user feedback.