translate2R: Migrate SPSS scripts to R at the push of a button

After their presentation at the international “user!” conference, data analysis specialist eoda starts the public alpha testing of translate2R. With the start of alpha testing the innovative migration solution by the company hailing from Kassel discards the working title “translateR” and takes on the final product brand name “translate2R”. translate2R is a service for the automated translation of SPSS® syntax to R code, therefore supporting data analysts with a quick and low-risk migration to R.

The manual translation of many, frequently rather complex SPSS scripts often presents itself as a tedious and error-prone task, and represents a rather large obstacle for many analysts and companies to migrate to a modern, open source data management and analysis tool like R. With translate2R this hurdle will be diminished substantially. “Many companies have recognized the advantages of R. Still, old scripts with thousands of rows of code in other statistics languages pose a large barrier and an almost incalculable risk when migrating to R. translate2R will help limiting this risk distinctively”, Oliver Bracht, CTO of eoda, explains the value of translate2R for users.

translate2R: user friendly and intuitive

translate2R, developed by a cooperation between eoda and the University of Kassel and sponsored by the LOEWE program of the German state of Hesse, will be provided as both, a cloud service and on premise. The translation will be processed in two steps for the user: first, the SPSS syntax will be imported into the user friendly browser frontend of translate2R, then the corresponding R functions will be generated by the push of a button. Finally, the generated code will be executed in R. The accompanying R package translateSPSS2R contains all required functions for the code to run appropriately and is compatible will almost every possible installation of R. Besides migration projects to R, translate2R also support programmers who are firm with SPSS and who are looking for a comforting introduction into R. Vice versa, translate2R also enables users to comfortably implement common SPSS functions in R.

The user friendly browser frontend of translate2R.

translate2R taps into „the most powerful programming language for data analysis“

With the migration to R almost innumerable opportunities for data analysis will open up to its users. The global community of developers is a tireless motor for steady progress and enables a level of functionality, quality and actuality for data mining and predictive analytics never seen before. R is open source and available free of any licensing costs. Moreover, through its modern programming concepts, R supports the generation of future proof and maintainable scripts for a plethora of analytical tasks. After a successful start of translate2R with the SPSS® syntax, an expansion to other statistics languages is planned.

Anyone interested in translate2R can use the free alpha testing to gain first insights in this groundbreaking migration solution.