Contents

• Workbooks
• Reports
• Stand-Alone Windows

When you perform an analysis, STATISTICA generates output in the form of multimedia tables (spreadsheets) and graphs. There are three basic channels controlled by the Output Manager to which you can direct all output: workbooks, reports, and stand-alone windows.

Each of the three STATISTICA output channels has its unique advantages. They can be used in many combinations (e.g., a workbook and report simultaneously) and can be customized in a variety of ways. Also, all output objects (spreadsheets and graphs) placed in each of the output channels can contain other embedded and linked objects and documents, so STATISTICA output can be hierarchically organized in a variety of ways.

The unique advantages of each of the three STATISTICA output channels will be described in the three sections that follow. More comprehensive overviews of each of the document types associated with the respective channels of output can be found in STATISTICA Documents.

Workbooks are the default way of managing output (for more information, see the workbooks section of STATISTICA Documents). Each output document (e.g., a STATISTICA Spreadsheet or Graph, as well as a Microsoft Word or Excel document) is stored as a tab in the workbook.

Documents can be organized into hierarchies of folders or document nodes (by default, one is created for each new analysis) using a tree view, in which individual documents, folders, or entire branches of the tree can be flexibly managed.

For example, selections of documents can be extracted (e.g., drag-copied or drag-moved) to the report window or to the application workspace (i.e., the STATISTICA application "background" where they will be displayed in stand-alone windows). Entire branches can be placed into other workbooks in a variety of ways in order to build specific folder organization, etc.

Technically speaking, workbooks are ActiveX document containers (see ActiveX technology). Workbooks are compatible with a variety of foreign file formats (e.g., the Microsoft Office documents) that can be easily inserted into workbooks and in-place edited.

User notes and comments in workbooks. Workbooks offer powerful options to efficiently manage even extremely large amounts of output, and they may be the best output handling solution for both novices and advanced users. It might appear that one of their possible drawbacks is that user comments (e.g., notes) and supplementary information cannot be as transparently inserted into the "stream" of the workbook output as they can in traditional, word processor style reports, such as STATISTICA Reports (see the next section). However, note that:

• All STATISTICA documents can easily be annotated, both (a) directly, by typing text into graphs, tables, and reports, and (b) indirectly, by entering notes into the Comments box of the Document Properties dialog (accessed from the File - Properties menu), and
• Formatted documents with notes and comments (in the form of text files, STATISTICA Report documents, WordPad or word processor documents, etc.) can easily be inserted anywhere in the hierarchical organization of output in workbooks. Moreover, such summary notes or comment documents can be made nodes for groups of subordinate objects to which the note is related to further enhance their organization.

Reports in STATISTICA (more information about reports is available in STATISTICA Documents) offer a more traditional way of handling output where each object (e.g., a STATISTICA Spreadsheet or Graph, or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet) is displayed sequentially in a word processor style document.

However, the technology behind this simple editor offers you very rich functionality. For example, like the workbook (see the previous section), the STATISTICA Report is also an ActiveX container (click here for information on ActiveX technology) where each of its objects (not only STATISTICA Spreadsheets and Graphs, but also any other ActiveX-compatible documents, e.g., Microsoft Excel spreadsheets) remains active, customizable, and in-place editable. The obvious advantages of this way of handling output (more traditional than the workbook) are the ability to insert notes and comments "in between" the objects as well as its support for the more traditional way of quick scrolling through and reviewing the output to which some users may be accustomed (the editor supports variable speed scrolling and other features of the IntelliMouse).

The obvious drawback, however, of these traditional reports is the inherent flat structure imposed by their word processor style format, although that is what some users or certain applications may favor.

Finally, STATISTICA output documents can also be directed to a queue of stand-alone windows; the Queue Length can be controlled in the Output Manager

The clear disadvantage of this output mode is its total lack of organization and its natural tendency to clutter the application workspace (note that some procedures can generate hundreds of tables or graphs with a click of the button).

One of the advantages of this way of handling output is that you can easily custom arrange these objects within the STATISTICA application workspace (e.g., to create multiple, easy to identify "reference documents" to be compared to the new output). However, note that in order to achieve that effect, you do not need to configure the output ahead of time and generate a large number of (mostly unwanted) separate windows that can clutter the workspace. Instead, individual, specific output objects directed to and stored in the other two channels (workbooks and reports) can easily be dragged out from their respective tree views onto the application workspace as needed.

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