Bug 86071 - Import *.sav &*.zsav files in LibO Calc
Summary: Import *.sav &*.zsav files in LibO Calc
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Document Liberation Project
Classification: Unclassified
Component: General (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-11-09 18:28 UTC by Bastián Díaz
Modified: 2021-05-29 13:53 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
sample .sav file from IBM SPSS website (987 bytes, application/x-spss-sav)
2021-05-29 13:53 UTC, Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Details

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Description Bastián Díaz 2014-11-09 18:28:55 UTC
*.sav & *.zsav files,These are files used by the SPSS statistical software. It would be a great improvement Libo Calc can import these files and to export them in ODS. Moreover, these data can be used by Calc to perform basic statistical analysis (from 4.3), which is ideal for use by students.

I opened a discussion document liberation mailing list
http://listarchives.documentliberation.org/www/discuss/msg00095.html

PSPP project web page
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/pspp/

Test files
https://github.com/bedf/PSPP-dev-utilities/tree/master/data-files

Thanks
Comment 1 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2014-11-11 06:33:21 UTC
(In reply to Bastián Díaz from comment #0)
> *.sav & *.zsav files,These are files used by the SPSS statistical software.
> It would be a great improvement Libo Calc can import these files and to
> export them in ODS. Moreover, these data can be used by Calc to perform
> basic statistical analysis (from 4.3), which is ideal for use by students.

As I said about adding support for the DTA format:
* How popular are SAV and ZAV file formats?
* How many users of SPSS will want to import their data into LibreOffice?

> PSPP project web page
> http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/pspp/
> 
> Test files
> https://github.com/bedf/PSPP-dev-utilities/tree/master/data-files

As always, providing a spec and test files is greatly appreciated!

Status -> NEW
Comment 2 Bastián Díaz 2014-11-11 20:20:59 UTC
(In reply to Robinson Tryon (qubit) from comment #1)
> 
> As I said about adding support for the DTA format:
> * How popular are SAV and ZAV file formats?

Unlike file format Stata, SPSS SAV format is very popular (ZSAV is zcompressed SAV version), and is considered a standard for this type of file.
Its popularity leads to public and private institutions to publish databases on this file format, and not always using a data format separated by commas or tabs.

In UK dating service, present a list of formats that can be found in the data : http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/help/faq/formats.aspx


> * How many users of SPSS will want to import their data into LibreOffice?

Consider that for these files, there is no substitute OpenSource, and export it to another format leads to some loss of data (ex. metadata variables as labels), but his data matrix remains intact. It is always good to use spreadsheets, I pert export to ODS format does not exist transparently. (Free alternatives as PSPP or R use this file format and can import data from ODS spreadsheet).

In answer question, few users of SPSS will export your data to LibreOffice, but can be many LibreOffice users who want to use their data are in SPSS format (downloadable as a public database).

More info for this file format:
http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/pspp-dev/html_node/System-File-Format.html#System-File-Format
http://surveyanalysis.org/wiki/SPSS_Data_File_Specifications
https://docs.openclinica.com/3.1/openclinica-user-guide/spss-file-specifications

Thanks
Comment 3 Alex Thurgood 2015-01-03 17:40:05 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 4 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2021-05-29 13:53:21 UTC
Created attachment 172435 [details]
sample .sav file from IBM SPSS website

Including an example .sav file for the IBM SPSS website to easily test.
The full archive of samples is available at this page: https://study.sagepub.com/aldrich3e/student-resources/ibm%C2%AE-spss-%C2%AE-sample-files

Example of open source software capable of opening a .sav file are:
- PSPP
- Jamovi
- R (with the help of various packages)