SOFA

From LIMSWiki
Revision as of 16:27, 16 June 2015 by Shawndouglas (talk | contribs) (Removed standalone SF links so as to not encourage downloading from that site.)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigationJump to search
SOFA
SOFA logo.gif
Original author(s) Grant Paton-Simpson
Developer(s) Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd
Initial release May 19, 2009 (2009-05-19) (0.6.8)[1]
Stable release

1.5.4  (January 13, 2021; 3 years ago (2021-01-13))

[±]
Preview release none [±]
Written in Python
Operating system Cross-platform
Available in Multilingual
Type Reporting and analysis software
License(s) GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Website sofastatistics.com

SOFA (Statistics Open For All) is a free open-source statistics, analysis, and reporting package.

Product history

On May 16 and 17, 2009, software developer Grant Paton-Simpson set up open-source projects on SourceForge, Launchpad, and Freecode[2] and released SOFA version 0.6.8 two days later.[1] Later in February 2010, Paton-Simpson detailed three reasons behind the motivation for the open-source project[3]:

1. "So students can easily access useful and educational statistical software..."
2. "To allow smaller, or poorly-resourced organisations ... to conduct basic quantitative research and to generate useful ad hoc and routine reports"
3. "Because statistical thinking is a fantastic intellectual resource that deserves greater appreciation..."

In 2012, SOFA won the ZaReason People's Choice award and was a finalist for the Open Source Software Project award in the biennial New Zealand Open Source Awards.[4]

Features

The main features of SOFA include[5]:

  • developer focus on output's aesthetic
  • supports multiple direct database connections
  • supports MySQL, Microsoft Access, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and CUBRID databases
  • import from and export to Microsoft Excel
  • supports ODS, CSV, and Google Docs data imports
  • enter raw data into tables of built-in SQLite database
  • supports data recoding
  • HTML tabular output
  • extensive charting
  • wide variety of statistical options for data analysis
  • suggestions and impact analysis for proper tables and tests
  • scheduling/automation
  • Multilingual

Hardware/software requirements

Requirements for installing SOFA are included with the installer packages. (Python, wxPython, etc.)

Consult the installation guide for more information.

Videos, screenshots, and other media

Entities using SOFA

Further reading

External links

SOFA can also be found on SourceForge. However, use caution when downloading and installing from there; the install package may contain undesirable add-on software.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "SOFA Statistics Open For All - Timeline". Launchpad. https://launchpad.net/sofastatistics/+series. Retrieved 28 May 2014. 
  2. "Registered with Sourceforge, Freshmeat and Launchpad". Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd. 17 May 2009. http://www.sofastatistics.com/blog/registered-with-sourceforge-freshmeat-and-launchpad/. Retrieved 28 May 2014. 
  3. "Why should statistics be Open For All?". Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd. 21 February 2010. http://www.sofastatistics.com/blog/why-should-statistics-be-open-for-all/. Retrieved 28 May 2014. 
  4. "2012 Winners and Finalists". New Zealand Open Source Awards. Catalyst IT Limited. http://www.nzosa.org.nz/winners-2012. Retrieved 28 May 2014. 
  5. "SOFA - Feature Highlights". Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd. http://www.sofastatistics.com/features.php. Retrieved 28 May 2014.