savespss (from SSC, by Sergiy Radyakin)

[Clyde Schechter]

I'm thinking of using Sergiy Radyakin's -savespss- program as my workhorse for a project I do with some other people who use only SPSS. I do a lot of work with this group and it's important that the transfer of my output to SPSS be seamless for them.

In the past I have used StatTransfer for this purpose, but currently they will not allow a single-user license to be used over a VPN connected to a server that is connected to a large network.

I've tested -savespss- out briefly on a couple of typical data sets, and the only problem I have encountered is that Stata dates are automatically converted to datetime variables when exported to SPSS. That's something I can work around and live with. But I'm wondering if any Forum members have experience with this program and can advise me of any quirks or problems I should be aware of. I'd appreciate any advice.

(I've read the thread at https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...ata-convertion which pointed out one problem that got resolved quickly. But that thread is a couple of years old, and so I'm wondering what else has turned up.)

Added: I'm also aware that SPSS does not support strLs, but we don't use those in this work anyway.

[Joseph Coveney]

Can your colleagues' version of SPSS read SAS XPORT files? Maybe you could go that route if you wanted to stick with official Stata commands. Version 8 SAS XPORT I think handles longer variable names, I think.

You couldn't work on your own local machine to use Stat/Transfer there, and ship the .sav file back over the VPN, I guess . . .

[Clyde Schechter]

Thanks for that suggestion. I will ask them about that.

[quote]

You couldn't work on your own local machine to use Stat/Transfer there, and ship the .sav file back over the VPN, I guess . . .[/quote[
No, unfortunatley not. My data access agreement with their institution prohibits me from taking any of the data off the server. And their IT department has configured my interface to prevent me from doing so were I to try.

[Richard Williams]

You might try rioweb if your files aren’t too big or complicated.

https://gallery.shinyapps.io/rioweb/

Also can’t your SPSS people read .dta files directly? At least maybe if you save them in an older version of Stata?

[Clyde Schechter]

Hmm, I wasn't aware of rioweb. It seems to work well with a few test cases I tried. Thanks!

I don't know if they can read .dta files directly. I've been told that SPSS can read .dta files up to version 9. But I'm running 16, and even -saveold- won't take me back that far.

[daniel klein]

From the initial question, I got the impression that Clyde is not sure whether he can fully trust savespss to get the job done. If this is true, then Joseph's suggestion to go for one of official Stata's commands to export the data in some format that SPSS understands appears to be the best choice.

While I appreciate Richard's mentioning of rioweb and have no intentions to go off-topic here, I do wonder why you would trust a community-contributed R-package more than a community-contributed Stata package.

Best
Daniel

[Clyde Schechter]

daniel klein has indeed captured the meaning of my inquiry. Before adopting either savespss or rioweb I want to do "due diligence" to make sure that it will serve my and my collaborators' needs. Hence my inquiry here. And I will also be inquiring elsewhere about rioweb.

[Erik Ruzek]

SPSS can read .dta files, at least the last few versions of SPSS are able to. It can also save to .dta if they make changes and want to share with you.

[Richard Williams]

I don’t know if either rioweb or savespss is superior to the other. But if you don’t have Stata or a nice guy like Clyde who will convert things for you, then rioweb might be a nice free choice.

[Marcos Almeida]

This is surely not the best approach, but I usually export from Stata to Excel, then to SPSS.

[Joseph Coveney]

My data access agreement with their institution prohibits me from taking any of the data off the server. And their IT department has configured my interface to prevent me from doing so were I to try.

I think that rioweb might not be a viable option in this case.

[Richard Williams]

Given the data access restrictions, I am not sure how files do get transferred from one site to the other. But if Clyde can get .dta files to them, maybe they can do the conversions themselves with rioweb. But perhaps it is just as easy for Clyde to create the SPSS files himself and send those web.

Also, while rioweb is convenient, if you've got R it is easy enough to install rio and associated programs and do conversions offline. Or, just install whatever the specific programs are that do file conversions. I'm not a big fan of R, but free does sometimes have its advantages.

[Dave Airey]

In R, rioweb uses rio which uses haven (in part) which calls a set a C routines:

https://github.com/lbraglia/rioweb
https://github.com/leeper/rio
https://haven.tidyverse.org/
https://github.com/WizardMac/ReadStat

[Richard Williams]

My vague recall is that when I installed rio it also installed other needed programs, but if not it is easy enough to do it yourself. I think rio and rioweb are a good poor person's Stat/Transfer, at least if your data files aren't too fancy. It also supports many other file formats. I recommend it all the time to people who don't have Stata (or SPSS, or something else) but need to read files in that format. A lot of times, though, their file is monstrously large and rioweb can't handle it. (I don't know if rio on your machine could do better.)

Of course, Clyde just mostly wants whatever works best, and I don't know the answer to that. I mostly use Stat/Transfer as needed, but unfortunately they don't let you have it for free. If free options don't seem to work ok maybe the other site should break down and buy Stat/Transfer. Or better yet, start doing everything in Stata, which is what they really should be doing anyway. ;-)