Project Title:

            X-STATIS

Extended Statistical Information System

            Budget:                                                          2,8 MEURO

            EU Program:                                                 IST

            Implementing Organisations:                     ATKOSoft S.A., and X-STATIS Consortium

Subject:

The industry is constantly searching for discovering new ways that would improve and offer user-friendly data analysis, in order to derive useful conclusions from collected data. This need has resulted from the plethora of collected data that exists, handled usually by non-experts who are not familiar with data analysis methodologies and the interpretation of their results. In addition, there are many data providers who sell their data and are interested in a standardized and user-friendly way of data extraction and analysis, which can be given to their clients and support in this way their marketing strategies.

Thus, under this project’s framework an extended statistical information system (X-StatIS) has been developed, which:

1.      Assists and/or guides the non-expert users, through an interactive user-friendly interface, in order to select and apply the most appropriate data analysis method;

2.      Help them proceed with interpretation of the generated results, by providing the users with sufficient information and guidance in order to evaluate and understand the outcome of the analysis;

3.      Is flexible and allows smart adaptation of software usage on several statistical databases held by data providers;

4.      has the ability to work as regular statistical software with any data set not restricted to specific databases;

5.      Has a standard interface allowing thus third parties to extend its functionality by developing new data analysis methods capable of plugging into the proposed system;

6.      Is based on the most modern and advanced techniques and makes use of state‑of‑the‑art IT methods;

7.      Offers a European‑oriented solution and address a market area, which is currently dominated by overseas companies;

The project is targeted at covering the needs of data providers selling data, as well as the needs of end-users dealing with data analysis.

This extended statistical information system consists of the following components:

·         Main module having a standard application programming interface (API) allowing integration of statistical analysis modules developed under this project or by third party developers.

·         Statistical Advisor Module. An open and parameterized module giving the feel of a semi-expert system since it interacts with the user and other system components in such way that it hides the complexity of the statistical expert knowledge required for data analysis. It guides the user “smoothly” and intelligently to the appropriate method without the need of the user being a statistical expert, in order to understand, apply the methods offered by the system and interpret their results.

·         Guidance Tools to let expert data analysts create scenarios to be followed by the Statistical Advisor Module and by non-experts.

·         A library of statistical methods. All the statistical methods use a standard API allowing classification of the output in order to be used as input to other methods.

·         Scripting module for automated analysis of repetitive situations, integrating macro‑instructions for data choice, methods applied and presentation of results into a file, which can be executed without user interaction.

·         Analysis maps showing the overall structure of data analysis sessions. Analysis maps could be considered as a history of the analysis, and it could be used to return to previous data analysis steps.

·         Knowledge database. It contains the parameters and rules associated with several statistical analysis methods. These is to be used by the statistical advisor module for guidance in the selection of data, methods, and manipulation of results.

·         Metadata wizard. A module that guides the data providers in the description of the knowledge database parameters characterizing the data set variables. The advantage of this module is that data sets from any source could be used by the system, making it capable for suggesting the appropriate statistical method for analysis.

For the development of the system, the experience and know-how which participants (especially ATKOSoft and QUANTOS) have acquired through involvement in previous projects originated by Eurostat will be used.