RSS Matters

By Dr.Karl Ho, Research and Statistical Support Services Manager

"Study the past, if you would divine the future*"

The year of 1999 nears its end. So, what can I write on top of the ubiquitous Y2K issue?  In some sense, the Y2K issue really did push us for more developments and move on to new services and applications. In the following I give a retrospective of the changes that occur to our services and an outline to what the future RSS will look like in the new millennium.

Application support

Software developers worked the hardest this year to roll out new versions of their software. Again, thanks to the Y2K. We have seen SPSS jump from 8.0 to 10.0 and SAS facelift all its software to be Y2K-compliant. As a result, SAS for Windows has moved from 6.12 to 8.0 and S-Plus boosts to version 2000 and 5.0 for Windows and UNIX respectively. Believe it or not, we received the new software mostly in the last quarter of the year. That is, we dealt with 20 different versions of the three software simultaneously!

We have tried our best to present these latest versions of the software available in all major venues including the General Access Labs (GALs), UNIX hosts and the IBM mainframe. While some of the GALs are still using the older version, we will upgrade all the statistical applications to the latest versions during the semester break. 

According to the University policy, we have to render all supported software Y2K compliant, which we have mostly achieved earlier this year. Unfortunately, SPSS Inc. has stopped the development of the CMS version of the software and we have to discontinue the support of it. Regarding another version of SPSS on the mainframe, SPSS for MVS, the company sent a patch in early December to render the software "Y2K-enabled" and we did apply the patch as soon as we received it.

Consult our list of the RSS software compliance if you have any questions on this topic. A list of the latest versions of the RSS software is as follows:

If you call yourself a mainframe person and are still dubious if you are safe, consult our Mainframe user Y2K Survival guide. 

Teleform Designer 6.1

This year, we also introduced a new application that facilitates questionnaire design and automated data entry. Teleform Designer 6.1 can print out professional, scannable survey forms and significantly helps reduce the turn-around data entry time. We also designed a short course for users who intend to use the Designer for their survey (see below).

Student Version of SAS

Last year, we negotiated with SAS Institute and made available a low-priced student version of SAS. We were, however, unable to deliver the new version of the software for students in the fall semester owing to several reasons related to the delay in license renewal. We will release the latest version, 8.0, with two CD-ROMs in spring 2000. The price will be lower than the previous version and the software will be available at the UNT Bookstore. Again, for students only. Faculty and staff members who want to get a copy of the software need to contact our office at the Computing Center.

Statistical Application Upgrades

In the coming year, we expect to introduce a new monitoring system that ensures all statistical applications (16 of which available for public use) will be upgraded or updated at least once a year with no interruption during the semester. Since SPSS for CMS will be unavailable, we will also begin to provide more support of applications on other platforms such as UNIX, Windows and Mac. Talking about Macs, we recently received a notice from SPSS, Inc. that the company will release SPSS 10.0 for the Mac next year. We will introduce the software for Mac users once it is available. For more details, check the SPSS press release in this regard.

Data services

In the year of 1999, we have primarily focused on the data migration from mostly IBM mainframe (e.g. CMS and MVS) to local hosts or UNIX. In particular, we developed programs that transfer data on the old-style round-reel tapes to other platforms such as UNIX. In the coming year, we anticipate some support requests on dealing with the repercussions pertaining to Y2K.

If you still have data on either CMS or MVS and you want to move on to other platforms such as Windows or UNIX, you can use FTP to download the files to your local host. For MVS users, you can use IEBGENER to download the data first to CMS and then to other host. See the following link for these procedures:

How to download files from MVS?
How to transfer files from CMS?

Wait, did you say you still have data on those round-reel tapes? Consult our Mainframe user Y2K Survival guide, which provides useful information to deal with mainframe data.

Next year, we will focus more on delivering data via the Web and CD-ROMs. If you like to get research data from ICPSR or any data archives, contact us so we can ready the data for you in one of these media. 

Educational services

The year of Rabbit is also the year of workaholics. Each semester, we provided 13 to 14 courses ranging from SPSS programming to Web survey design. Yes, we have delivered over 40 courses. Despite that these courses are free of charge, it is imperative to bring yourself if you want to go through these intensive training sessions. So, don't just sign your name and we need you to show if you happen to check and register for the class. As for us, we provide the best-equipped lab and computers on campus, course materials and our best instructors. The following lists the courses we have provided:

To help customers migrate from other platforms to UNIX, we've introduced a new course to train users to use the statistical applications on the Research UNIX system. The course covers the basic information that most current users may not even know when using UNIX. It also focuses on the statistical packages such as SPSS, S-Plus and SAS on UNIX, which are much faster than the Windows versions and have the capability to handle large data sets. On top of that, we introduced a new series called "New Technologies for Survey Research" that provides training for survey researchers in using the new Teleform Designer and designing Web surveys using FrontPage.

In the coming year, we anticipate a proliferation of Web surveys and usage of the Teleform automated survey system. We look forward to developing depository/library of Frontage Web survey codes (HTML) and Teleform survey forms that users can extract from the Web to facilitate the design and composition of surveys.  

Okay, long enough. The year 2000 is an exciting year to look forward to and we envision RSS to be an office that provides more and better service in this coming year to help researchers and promote publications. Again, we are eager to hear any comments and suggestions. Have a great Y2K!

* Lun Yu (The Analects), Confucius