Convert DELTA

Convert DELTA file to SDD or EML

With this form you can directly convert data from a file in DELTA format into an XML file according schema SDD 1.1 rev5. No connection to a database is needed for the conversion. Choose Data -> File operations -> Convert data file → DELTA to SDD … from the menu to open the window. In the window click on the button to select the file with the data you want to convert. If the Multi-file option is selected before pressing the button, a folder selection window opens to select the folder where the DELTA files are located. For muti-file processing currently the files “chars”, “items”, “specs” and “extra” are evaluated. If during analysis any problem occurs, you may click on the button to reload the file and re-initialize the window.

The contents of the file will be shown in the upper part of the File tree tab page. If special characters are not displayed corretly, try a different Encoding setting, e.g. “ANSI”, and reload the document using the button.

The Insert “variable” state controls the handling of the DELTA state “V” for categorical summary data. If possible, a categorical state “variable” is inserted to the descriptor data and set in the summary data, when the state “V” is present in the description data.

If the Check strings for illegal characters option is checked, all string literals that shall be exported from database are scanned for illegal non-printable characters and matches are replaced by a double exclamation mark ("‼"). Activating this option may increase the analysis processing time.

In the file tree you may deselect entries that shall not be converted. Use that option very carefully, because if you deselect entries that are being referenced by other parts of the input tree, e.g. descriptors referenced by descriptions, the analysis step might become erronous!

If during reading of the files expressions cannot be interpreted, suspicious entries are maked with yellow background (warning) in the file tree. When you move the mouse curser over the marked entries, you get additional information as tool tip or the tree node text itself tells the problem (see example below).

Analysis

To analyse the data in the file click on the Analyse data button. During the analysis the program checks the dependencies between the different parts of the data and builds up an analysis tree in the lower part of the window. The analysis tree contains all data in a suitable format for the final step. During data analysis the icon of the button changes to and you may abort processing by clicking the button.

In the Analysis settings section (see image below) you set the document’s Language. You man change the display and sorting of the entries in the Language combo box from “<code> - <description>” to “<description> - <code>” (and back) by clicking the button . If you need language codes that are not included in the list, click the button. For more details see Edit language codes.

In DELTA text in angle bracket (<text>) usually denotes comments, which are by default imported into the “Details” fields of the database. In the lower parts of the Analysis settings you may adjust a different handling for description, descriptor and categorical state items.

For DELTA comments in descriptions you may Move comments to details (default) or Keep comments in description titles.
For DELTA comments in descriptors you may Move comments to details (default), Move comments to notes or Keep comments in descriptor titles.
For DELTA comments in categorical states you may Move comments to details (default) or Keep comments in categorical state titles.

After changing one of these settings click on the Analyse data button to make the changes effective.

After analysis a message window informs you if any warnings or errors occured. You can find detailled error and warning information at the file and/or analysis trees by entries with red text (error) or yellow background (warning). When you move the mouse curser over the marked entries, you get additional information as bubble help or the tree node text itself tells the problem (see example below). By clicking on the status text besides the progress bar, you can open an analysis protocol (see below, right).

If an analysis error occured, you are not able to proceed. You will first have to correct the problem, e.g. by excluding the erronous descriptor in the example above (after reloading the file). If a warning occured, it might not cause further problems, but you should take a closer look if the converted data will be correct.

Write data

Pressing the Generate file button in the Write SDD group box opens a window to select the target XML file. By default the target file has the same name as the DELTA file, followed by the extension “.xml”. The Comptible option controls generation of files with most possible compatibility to the SDD standard. On the other hand some data might not be present in the generated file, if this option is activated.

As an additional option you may generate file according the EMLschema, which consists of a data table (tabulator separated text file) and an XML file that contains the metadata including column descriptions. Click on the Generate file button in the Write EML group box. The generated file names will have the endings "_EML_DataTable.txt" and "_EML_Metadata.xml".

Pressing the drop down button EML settings in the Write EML group box opens the EML writer options. You can chose to include a special sign for empty column values or set the columns values in quotes (see left image below). Furthermore you may shose the column separator (tab stop rsp. comma) an decide if multiple categorical states shall be inserted as separate data columns. If you already generated EML files, the used settings will be automatically saved and you may restore them using the option Load last write settings. Finally click button EML settings to close the option panel.

Handling of special DELTA states

In the DELTA format the special states “-” (not applicable), “U” (unknown) and “V” (variable) are available for categorical and quantitative characters. These states are treated in the folloging manner during import:

“-” (not applicable)
The data status “Not applicable” is set.
“U” (unknown)
The data status “Data unavailable” is set.
“V” (variable)
The data status “Not interpreterable” is set.