[DRILL-7716] Create Format Plugin for SPSS Files

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.17.0
• Fix Version/s: 1.18.0
• Component/s: Storage - Text & CSV
• Labels: enhancement ready-to-commit
• Assignee: Charles Givre
• Reporter: Charles Givre
• Created: 23/Apr/20 14:45
• Updated: 06/May/20 00:35
• Resolved: 06/May/20 00:35

Description

1. Format Plugin for SPSS (SAV) Files
   This format plugin enables Apache Drill to read and query Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (or Statistical Product and Service Solutions) data files. According
   to Wikipedia: [1]

SPSS is a widely used program for statistical analysis in social science. It is also used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government, education researchers, marketing organizations, data miners, and others. The original SPSS manual (Nie, Bent & Hull, 1970) has been described as one of "sociology's most influential books" for allowing ordinary researchers to do their own statistical analysis. In addition to statistical analysis, data management (case selection, file reshaping, creating derived data) and data documentation (a metadata dictionary is stored in the datafile) are features of the base software.

1. 1. Configuration
      To configure Drill to read SPSS files, simply add the following code to the formats section of your file-based storage plugin. This should happen automatically for the default
      `cp`, `dfs`, and `S3` storage plugins.

Other than the file extensions, there are no variables to configure.

```json
"spss":

{ "type": "spss", "extensions": [ "sav" ] }

```

1. 1. Data Model
      SPSS only supports two data types: Numeric and Strings. Drill maps these to `DOUBLE` and `VARCHAR` respectively. However, for some numeric columns, SPSS maps these numbers to
      text, similar to an `enum` field in Java.

For instance, a field called `Survey` might have labels as shown below:

<table>
<tr>
<th>Value</th>
<th>Text</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>99</td>
<td>No Answer</td>
</tr>
</table>

For situations like this, Drill will create two columns. In the example above you would get a column called `Survey` which has the numeric value (1,2 or 99) as well as a column
called `Survey_value` which will map the integer to the appropriate value. Thus, the results would look something like this:

<table>
<tr>
<th>`Survey`</th>
<th>`Survey_value`</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>99</td>
<td>No Answer</td>
</tr>
</table>

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS

Issue Links

• incorporates: DRILL-7600 Move Compress File Function to Test Utility