Understanding Dialog ERA(sm) Pricing with the Dialog Alert Service

Support : Search Aids : ERA : Pricing

Understanding Dialog ERA^SM Pricing with the Dialog Alert Service

Dialog ERA (Electronic Redistribution and Archiving) is a Dialog system feature that allows customers to purchase the right to redistribute search results within their organization, or to retain search results in a local database. REDIST N and ARCHIVE N (where N is the number of copies to be redistributed or the number of users with access to the local database) can be used with the TYPE, PRINT, or REPORT commands; example: PRINT S1/9/ALL REDIST 15 ADDR ACSMITH. COPIES N is used only with the PRINT command. The tables below show the charges for the use of these commands in all participating databases.

REDIST and COPIES

	Multiplier	Number of copies allowed
Price for original record X	1	1-2
	1.5	3-25
	3	26-100
	4	101-200
	6	201-500
	8	500-1000
	10	1001 or more

ARCHIVE

	Multiplier	Number of copies allowed
Price for original record X	1.5	1-25
	3	26-200
	6	201-500
	8	501-1000
	10	1001 or more

An example will illustrate how to apply these multipliers to calculate the cost of using Dialog ERA commands in your Dialog Alert profile. In File 20 (Dialog Global Reporter), a weekly Alert profile costs $7.40. The user includes the following PRINT command in the Alert profile:

    PRINT S1/7/1-20 REDIST 25 ADDR ACJONES

The price for a Format 7 record in this database is $3.89. If the Alert in a given week generates six new records, the cost of the Alert that week will be:

Dialog Alert profile	$7.40
6 records @ $3.89 X 1.5	$35.01 (where 1.5 is the multiplier allowing the user to redistribute 25 copies
Total	$42.41

In general, you can calculate these costs by doing the following:

Multiply the number of records actually received with the Alert update by the cost of the format requested, and then multiply that number by the multiplier for the number of copies you wish to COPY, REDIST, or ARCHIVE.

Add the result to the cost of the Alert profile.

If your selected database provides 20 free records per Alert run, calculate the Print Credit by multiplying the number of records (up to 20) actually received by the cost of the format requested.

Subtract the Print Credit from the result in step 2 to determine the final cost of the Alert update.

Note: Dialog Alert profiles in some databases include 20 free records. For those databases that do not, there is no Print Credit to be included in the calculation. See Dialog pricing information for details.

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