[R] [OT] A free (as in freedom) replacement for StatTransfer

[Marc Schwartz]

On Sat, 2007-12-08 at 12:24 +0100, Luca Braglia wrote:
> Hello *
> 
> does anybody know a free (as in freedom) equivalent for Stat
> Transfer
> 
> http://stattransfer.com/
> 
> Thank you
> 	Bye

The answer is: it depends.

If you are looking for a single free open source application that covers
all of the formats that StatTransfer supports, then no.

However, many of the formats (at least in terms of being able to read
them) are supported by one or more components within R, either via the
base and recommended packages or via CRAN add-ons. Much of this is
covered in the R Data Import/Export manual.

Perhaps the most notable format that is lacking is the SAS proprietary
format (not the Transport format), which is not openly published and to
my knowledge, has not been independently reverse engineered.

Any of the commercial products that support that format, with the
possible exception of the SAS System Viewer (which is not open source,
but is free from SAS), will be closed source and will have to be
purchased. The non-SAS product vendors will have likely paid a licensing
fee to SAS for the technical details of the format, which they would
need to recover via customers paying for their product. They will also
have likely signed NDA's to prevent them from disclosing the relevant
source code and related materials that describe the format.

If there is specific functionality that you are looking for, let us know
and we can provide more targeted guidance.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz