Re: API?

[John Darrington]

[CCing: pspp-dev mailing list]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 10:50:31PM -0400, Serge Beaulieu wrote:
     Hi John!
     
     I am installing pspp this evening and will poke around to see what I can
     find and help out in any way I can with testing (in the psppire module of
     CVS).

Thanks.
     
     The reason I ask about an API is simple:
     I make some of my data that I collect via my webserver available to me in 2
     different formats (xls,csv).  Since my webserver runs on linux, and spss on
     windows ... I have to dowload from one of those formats, import it into
     spss,  run a syntax file full of value label and variable label commands to
     format the variables ... then run analysis.  I'd like to create a link on
     the webserver, whereby selecting an spss format I could create an spss file
     directly without the hassles.
     
     >From what I have read, syntax files work in PSPP as well, which is great.
     Does PSPP support this sort of thing in any way that I could use easily?


I know of several others who use PSPP in this way.  What they do is to
create a cgi script which creates a short syntax file and invokes PSPP 
and saves the file as a '*.SAV' system file.

There are some drawbacks to this approach, and the API which you're
asking about would certainly suit your purpose better, and it has been
discussed before.  My proposal is to release a shared library (and
possibly  a perl module too) which can be used to directly read/write
system files.  Ben, the PSPP maintainer, however is reluctant to
support such a library until the PSPP code is more stable.

J'     

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