Statistical Package Links (SAS, S-PLUS, MATLAB)

Charter Oak has recently completed direct connections from the three best known stat packs (SAS, S-Plus and Matlab) directly to the Venues® Data Engine.

Each of the three "Stat Pack Links" is identical in functionality. They allow a quantitative user direct access from the Stat Pack of their choice to the full range of data merged with various third party databases as distributed in the Charter Oak software container. Charter Oak is a full SAS Alliance member and has excellent working relationships at a number of levels with both Insightful (S-Plus) and Matlab.

In addition, by adding on optional Charter Oak software capability/modules, the user can add their own proprietary data (holdings, rankings, analyst data, portfolios etc.) and data from other sources to expand and customize their Stat Pack Link data warehouse.

These "Stat Pack Links" offer a number of significant advantages not available by any other platform or distribution means to those clients and potential clients interested in serious quantitative research.

Two Connective Approaches: "Pull" and "Push"

The "pull" method allows the user to open their Stat Pack, and using Charter Oak's 4GL in a customized Stat Pack routine retrieve customized vectors of raw and pre-processed data of their own definition directly into the Stat Pack real time with no intermediate files or loading steps.

This means that in a single, seamless connection, the user has complete and unlimited access to both time series and cross-sectional vectors of merged data. Having retrieved the data into the Stat Pack, the user can then analyze and manipulate the data using the power of their Stat Pack and store both the data and their analytical results in the Stat Pack's native format for future retrieval or further analysis.

The "push" method allows the user to create Stat Pack specific data files (SAS Datasets, S-Plus Data Frames or Matlab files) as output from a Charter Oak Analyzer Application macro. This second approach couples the pre-processing, data viewing, merging and cleaning capability of the Charter Oak data warehousing system with the statistical and analytical power of the user's chosen Stat Pack.

Batch Capability

In addition, Analyzer macros can be executed and the resulting Stat Pack Data files can be deposited on the user's hard drive using a command line interface with a standard Windows scheduling program.

This means the user can define a series of datasets he/she wants created (say routinely after each data update), run them overnight and have the resulting datasets waiting for them on their hard drive in the morning.