[R] Tools For Preparing Data For Analysis

[Barry Rowlingson]

Chris Evans wrote:

> Thanks Ted, great thread and I'm impressed with EpiData that I've
> discovered through this. I'd still like something that is even more
> integrated with R but maybe some day, if EpiData go fully open source as
> I think they are doing ("A full conversion plan to secure this and
> convert the software to open-source has been made (See complete
> description of license and principles)." at http://www.epidata.dk/ but
> the link to http://www.epidata.dk/about.htm doesn't exactly clarify this
> I don't think.  But I can hope.)
> 
> Thanks, yet again, to everyone who creates and contributes to the R
> system and this list: wonderful!

  Perhaps what we need is an XML standard for describing record-oriented 
data and its validation? This could then be used to validate a set of 
records and possibly also to build input forms with built-in validation 
for new records.

  You could then write R code that did 'check this data frame against 
this XML description and tell me the invalid rows'. Or Python code.

  This is the kind of thing that is traditionally built using a database 
front-end, but keeping the description in XML means that alternate 
interfaces (web forms, standalone programs using Qt or GTK libraries) 
can be used on the same description set.

  I had a quick search to see if this kind of thing exists already, but 
google searches for 'data entry verification' indicate that I should 
really pay some people in India to do that kind of thing for me...

Barry