Complex-statistical-table structure and operators for macro statistical databases

Abstract

They are two kinds of Statistical DataBases (SDBs), micro and macro-SDBs. Micro-SDBs describe individual entities or events, they are mainly used for statistical analysis. Macro-SDBs contain only summary-data achieved by statistical-mathematical operations on micro-SDBs. In this paper, we propose a data-structure called Complex Statistical Table (CST) which offer a formal and homogeneous framework to develop macro-SDBs. In order to manipulate CST structure, we define two classes of operators : CST transposition operators making data-organisation dynamic and CST retrieval operators that work on CST instances. We also propose a discussion pointing out our approach contrasted with other contributions of this field.