SPSS and PHP/MySQL Integration

mysql, php, spss

Solution

http://www.spss.com/smartscore/

In addition, it appears that SPSS has an available API to make the SPSS information available to other apps. Assuming you could get a connection to the SPSS system, it'd be a matter of CURLing the information back and forth (a web service) Aside from the XML brain damage, this is one of the best ways to get two non-similar systems talking to each other.

Problem

I apologize up front for the broadness of this question, but I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions/pointers. A friend's company uses SPSS for statistical data, surveys, etc. They'd like to be able to slice and dice the info via a web interface. I have no knowledge of SPSS, so there may be a simple web front end, but being a PHP/MySQL guy, I wondered if SPSS data can be exported in a way that MySQL can import or PHP can parse. Then I could build an AJAX front end to return queries in real time. The idea would be a results table that changes when you make selections like "Gender: Male", "Age: 20-25"... each change would update the results in the browser. So... 1) Can SPSS accomplish this with some kind of front end? 2) Can the data be easily exported in a generic format? I just want to know if I'm on a fools errand before I talk to my friend's boss about ideas. TIA. Don UPDATE: I had a meeting at my friend's company to discuss more specifics. It sounds like the SPSS data is stored in MS SQL Server, so I'm thinking that I could connect directly to the data if I can see some kind of schema logic and write my own web front end against it. Alternatively, I may be able to do a scheduled data dump of the data into another format.

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