# CountryData vs EntityProperty: why do different data access methods produce different results?

Illustrative example: using CountryData we are told the data is missing, but we can nevertheless access it via an EntityProperty. Shouldn't these provide the same result?

us = Entity["Country", "UnitedStates"]
CountryData[us, {"GDP", 2013}]  (* fails *)
gdp2013 = EntityProperty["Country", "GDP", {"Date" -> DateObject[{2013}]}]
us[gdp2013]  (* succeeds *)

• They probably should. I would report this to support@wolfram.com.
– chuy
Aug 25 '15 at 14:55
• It's even more worrisome than just not returning some values; the two approaches report slightly different values for the same year. Try e.g. 2008. I guess they fish for data in different pools... I would second @chuy's advice to report this to support. Aug 25 '15 at 15:29
• OK, I reported it.
– Alan
Aug 25 '15 at 16:31
• The case of CountryData is discussed in both responses to Finding out all undocumented values for “Properties” in XxxData functions. It is not clear to me whether or not the present question should be considered a duplicate. Aug 27 '15 at 16:48
• @WReach This is an entirely different problem. E.g., if we change the 2nd line of the example to CountryData[us, {"GDP", 2008}] it succeeds. Also, see the comment of @MarcoB.
– Alan
Aug 27 '15 at 18:36