Using Stata as a Computational Tool in a Relational Database Environment

Stata can be used as a companion to relational database programs to compute and serve up statistical and non-standard functions for live public use. This session builds upon previous North America Stata Users Group meetings on “Translating Data between MySQL and Stata” (2004), “Working with ODBC Data Sources in Stata” (2004), and “Integrating Stata with Database Management Systems” (2005) by demonstrating how a Microsoft Access database of electoral data can call up Stata do files to compute and/or estimate alternative measures of political party nationalization. This database uses Stata to compute Jones and Mainwaring’s (2003) measure of “Party Nationalization” using the egen_inequal command and Morgenstern and Potthoff’s (2005) measure of the “Components of Elections” using xtmixed. More generally, where data reside live and for broad public consumption, Stata can play a valuable role operating behind the scenes for non-technical users where measures of conceptual value cannot be generated from within the database environment.