As part of my work, I frequently have to 'shape' multi-dimensional datasets. This is reasonably easy to do in Racket and I'm thinking about pulling together some of the functions I use into a library. Before I do this though, I was wondering if there is any similar work I can build upon, or perhaps use to guide me.
As an example of what I mean, I'll receive from a colleague a file like this: Date, Site, Total Alkalinity as CaCO3 (mg/L), Carbonate as CaCO3 (mg/L), 1-Nov-12, BH1, 120, <5 1-Nov-12, BH2, 180, <5 1-Nov-12, BH3, 160, <5 26-Oct-12, BH1, 150, <1 26-Oct-12, BH2, 165, 0 26-Oct-12, BH3, 180, <5 (This is a laboratory analysis of water sampled from bore holes). This file is composed of two datasets (a set each of total alkalinity and carbonate), with shared dimensions of 'date' and 'site'. I'll often deal with files containing up to 80 datasets. More often than not, all I'll need to do is 'shape' these datasets into a format that can be pulled into a spreadsheet for further analysis/graphing. One example is: "", Total Alkalinity as CaCO3 (mg/L), Carbonate as CaCO3 (mg/L) BH1 1-Nov-12, 120, <5 26-Oct-12, 150, <1 BH2 1-Nov-12, 180, <5 26-Oct-12, 165, 0 BH3 1-Nov-12, 160, <5 26-Oct-12, 180, <5 Another example: "", BH1, BH2, BH3 Total Alkalinity as CaCO3 (mg/L) 1-Nov-12, 120, 180, 160 26-Oct-12, 150, 165, 180 Carbonate as CaCO3 (mg/L) 1-Nov-12, <5, <5, <5 26-Oct-12, <1, 0, <5 As you can see, the recursive nature of these reports makes them ideal for processing with Racket, and although it takes me a little while to get the format of a report right, I usually can add the report to my toolbox for whenever it's needed later. So I've started drafting what I think a good DSL for doing this type of task might be, something like: (define-dataset (date (date 'dd-MM-yyyy')) (site (text)) (parameter (text)) ...) (define-report example1 (columns (parameter ...)) (rows ((site) date))) I haven't worked out the details yet, and I'm not sure the above will work the way I want it to. But I've had a quick look at Microsoft's Scientific DataSet (http://sds.codeplex.com/), but it lacks the composability I'm used to with Racket. Is anyone aware of any similar work that does this, or that I could use as a guide? Thanks, Simon.
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