[Gretl-users] Re: Storing string-valued series in a database

On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 3:56 PM Artur T. <atecon(a)posteo.de&gt; wrote: > > The first time, I play around with the option to store a dataset as a > gretl database. This works, as mentioned in the command reference, for > cross-sectional and time-series data but not panel (ok so far). > > I tried to store a string-valued series. However, the string-values get > lost when importing again, only showing the numerical value mapping a > string to some discrete positive number. Artur, I think you have the wrong idea about gretl's database (.bin + .idx) format. Please check out Appendix A.3 of the Gretl User's Guide ("Native database format"): that's all there is to it. It's basically just a delivery mode for collections of published numerical data -- primarily time series data that includes mixed frequencies. The design criteria for the format are simplicity and speed of access, period. There's no support for string-valued series, nor is that planned. Some very basic editing capacity is supported via the "store" command but that is unlikely to be extended in any way.

To handle string-valued series via native gretl tools you need to use our dataset (as opposed to database) formats: gdt or gdtb. If you want to get fancier than that you should explore gretl's ODBC support.