Stefan Gawrich wrote:
I'm trying to establish ODBC-connections between Stata and a Firebird
database (V: 2.1) under Win XP.
The available ODBC-drivers are a bit outdated and not well documented. So I
had to find out more or less by trial and error why I couldn't export float
and double vars. The error is not a decimal point/comma issue but a issue of
decimal places.
The ODBC-driver is only capable of 18 decimal places while stata exports 20.
[redacted]
My question:
Is there any way to reduce decimal places before ODBC export inside Stata (I
need no more than 2 or 3 decimal places)
There are workarounds (like export as string or export multiplied with 1000
as an integer - with reconversion inside the database) but these are
burdensome and error-prone in routine use.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are a couple of ways that come to mind. The fastest is probably via
Kit Baum's -tosql- and then -odbc sqlfile-. The illustration do-file below
uses Microsoft Access solely because it's handy for illustration. I assume
that it would work with the DSN set up for Firebird.
Note that Access allows inserts of numeric values to be in single quote
marks, i.e., it allows a statement like
INSERT INTO s1 (age) VALUES ('6.123456789012345678')
when the column, age, is numeric. The suggestion assumes that Firebird
does, too.
You can install -tosql- from SSC (-findit tosql-).
Joseph Coveney
clear *
set more off
set obs 2
generate double age = 6.00000000000000000000
replace age = 6.123456789012345678 in 2
local dsn MS Access Database;DBQ=db1.mdb;
*
* Begin here
*
preserve
tostring age, replace format("%20.18f")
tosql age, table(s1)
restore
odbc exec("CREATE TABLE s1 (age FLOAT)"), dsn("`dsn'")
odbc sqlfile(s1.sql), dsn("`dsn'")
exit
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
