P.Mean: What's new in SPSS 17 (created 2008-10-07).

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I attended a webseminar on new developments in version 17 of SPSS. SPSS has improved research and reporting tools, more accessibility for non-statisticians and more accessibility for statistical programmers, and easier integration, deployment, and management.

Here are some of the research and reporting tools:

• SPSS 17 has a greatly improved syntax editor. The editor highlights commands, subcommands, and keywords using different colors, making your syntax easier to read and debug. Errors appear in the output window but are also highlighted in the syntax editor.
• SPSS 17 allows you more control on how your SPSS output can be exported to Microsoft Office.
• SPSS 17 allows for multiple imputation of missing values (using the SPSS Missing Values product).
• Nearest neighbor analysis is available in the base product. This helps in market segmentation analysis and benchmarking.
• The codebook procedure creates a handy comprehensive summary of your data.
• There is a spell check function for string variables.
• iGraph is being phased out, and SPSS 17 provides a conversion to their new graphical approach.
• Categorical regression.
• Median and lead functions and more control over rounding in the COMPUTE statement.
• There is a new add-on, SPSS EZ RFM, that provides RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary) scoring for business applications.

There are features for statistical programmers and non-statisticians. These features allow an advanced user to create user friendly interfaces for non-statisticians that are customi

• SPSS 17 has a base procedure that allows you to create a custom dialog box. This can incorporate programs like R through the SPSS Statistics Programmability Extension.
• Graphboard allows SPSS base users to use templates developed by a more advanced SPSS product called Viz Designer.
• You can now incorporate R graphics into SPSS.
• SPSS 17 has updated Python, VB.Net, and R plug-ins.
• You can now access data using JDBC/ODBC. This allows you to manipulate your data using SQL.

There are features for better integration, deployment, and management

• SPSS 17 supports multiple threads for sorting, multinomial logistic regresion, complex samples, and Cox regression. This is optimized in SPSS Statistics Server.
• Administration tools are improved. Troubleshooting tools are now available to resolve problems in real-time.
• You can now connect to SPSS Statistics Server from a Macintosh on Linux machine.
• There are new data mining tools available in some of the add-on products, such as Predictive Enterprise Services.
• Python is being promoted as a superior replacement for SAX Basic.
• SPSS Smartreader allows you to view SPSS output.
• SPSS 17 supports virtualization support on the server side.
• SPSS 17 now warns you if a file you are using has already been opened by someone else.

The talk ended with a demonstration. The interface has not changed much from version 16. It's worth noting that the interface in 16 is greatly different from previous versions. The 16 (and 17) interface works much more closely with standard conventions like drag and drop.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2010-04-01. Need more information? I have a page with general help resources. You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Category: SPSS software.