Re: cross tables in reports?

[Stanley A. Klein]

At 06:40 AM 10/31/2002 -0500, address@hidden wrote:
>Can gnue reports, or any other Free database tool for that matter, create
>crosstables, i.e. what <spit> excel <spit> calls pivot tables, (yes i know
>the OOo spreadsheet has the "Data Pilot" which is OpenOffice's answer to
>pivot tables but it's a point-and-click interactive tool and not a
>database).


If you are talking about cross tabulations and the subsequent statistical
processing the package to look for is called R.  It is a GPL statistical
system for which you can find links on at www.gnu.org.  It is a clone of a
commercial language called S.  It has really heavy-duty statistical
capabilities, a lot of extensions into specialized statistical areas, and
the capability of producing graphics based on its statistical analyses.
The package appears to be popular among academic departments of statistics,
who use and contribute.

It might be worthwhile to look at producing GNUe output that can be
processed by R or to consider an interface that allows R capabilities to
operate on GNUe-managed databases.  The last time I looked at it, the only
interface it had was command-line, although there could be a graphical
interface somewhere among the gazillion add-ons. It might be interesting to
see how easy it would be to create GNUe forms that could  and launch R
functions.

The combination of GNUe and R could make a very high powered strategic
planning, forecasting, and data mining capability.


Stan Klein