The document describes the development of the SOFA Statistics application, an open-source statistics software aimed at both specialists and non-specialists. It highlights the application's features, such as ease of use, database integration, and plans for future enhancements, including language support and improved functionality. The release process and the challenges of developing a cross-platform GUI using wxPython are also discussed, emphasizing a commitment to user-friendly output and learning support.

1. SOFA Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd Auckland, New Zealand SOFA Statistics Developing and releasing a Python open source application Grant Paton-Simpson sofastatistics.com

2. SOFA Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd Auckland, New Zealand Overview Introducing the SOFA Statistics application

3. How SOFA works with SQL databases

4. Using HTML for output (via wxWebKit)

5. Experience with existing statistics modules

6. wxPython GUI toolkit (esp the grid widget)

7. The release process (esp packaging)

8. In 30 minutes flat out!

9. SOFA Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd Auckland, New Zealand Introducing SOFA Statistics SOFA stands for S tatistics O pen F or A ll

10. A cross platform desktop application for: Making report tables from data (database, spreadsheet, directly entered)

11. Producing charts

12. Running key statistical tests The slogan is “ease of use, learn as you go, and beautiful output”

13. May be useful for specialist statisticians but emphasis on supporting non-specialists, and learning statisticians

14. Currently version 0.8.10 and pushing on towards a version 1.0 release

15. SOFA Architecture ... Linking not importing SQLite MySQL MS Access PostgreSQL SQL Server SOFA Scripts from GUI or by hand (available for automation) HTML output (spreadsheet- friendly)

16. SOFA Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd Auckland, New Zealand Working with SQL Not using an abstraction layer. Wrote my own code using MySQLdb module etc Already experienced with SQL

17. Want control over the information I get about data configuration (e.g character set)

18. Want control over how I interact with the databases for performance reasons Adding other databases, e.g. Oracle, is a process of copying an existing module and changing the implementation

19. SQL databases do things very differently SQLite with data type integrity (like dynamic typing)

20. PostgreSQL and SUM(expression)