How to Reduce the Size of a Data File for Upload to the Displayr Cloud

This article describes how to reduce the size of a data file that is too large to upload to the Displayr Cloud Drive directly. The current limit for upload is 8GB. Saving a .sav file as a QDat file in Q may result in reducing the file size to enable it to be successfully uploaded to the Displayr Cloud Drive.

Requirements

• A document with one or more loaded data sets (.sav, .xml, .sss, .mdd, .xls, .xlsx, .csv).
• If using Q: 
  • A Windows computer.
  • An installation of Q or Q Reader. If you do not have a Q license, click here to download and install Q Reader. 

Method

The following steps provide a summary of the approaches used to reduce an original 2.9GB .sav file down to 120MB .QDat file.

Using Displayr Alone (for files under 16GB):

1. Create a new Displayr document.
2. Upload the data file as a new data set. See Get Your Data Into Displayr for details.
   • If the file is larger than 8GB and an SPSS file, you can first compress your SPSS data set as a .zip file with some caveats:
     • If using a .zip file, ensure it is compressed using the "Deflate" compression algorithm. This is the default in most compression software.
     • If you create the zip file on a Mac, do not use Apple's built-in compression utility, as it creates extra files that interfere with Displayr's ability to load the data file. Use 3rd party software instead.  
     • When creating a zip file, only select the "Deflate" compression algorithm to ensure your file is compatible with Displayr. 
3. Publish the data set to the Cloud Drive: How to Publish Data to the Displayr Cloud Drive

See Create a Separate Data Preparation Document for a discussion on how to set up a workflow around this.

Using Q and Displayr (for files of all sizes):

1. Open the .sav file in Q (or the free Q Reader will also work).
2. Go to Tools > Save Data As SPSS/CSV File and click OK.
3. In the dialog box, in the save as type dropdown select QDat Files.
4. Name the file and click Save.
5. Go to Displayr.
6. Create a new document.
7. At the top right-hand side click on the initials icon:
8. Select Displayr Cloud Drive.
9. Click
10. Drag the .QDat file from Windows Explorer onto the Select Files to Upload box and click the Upload button.
11. Go back to Displayr by clicking on the back button in your web browser.
12. In Data Sources, click the + to add a new data set and select Displayr Cloud Drive.
13. Choose the QDat file from the list and click OK.

Technical Notes

A QDat file is a compressed version of your data set that combines the raw variables with any additional constructed variables (filters, recoded, restructured, etc.) and calculations (from the Calculation menu or custom JavaScript and R variables). These dynamic variables will effectively become hard-coded in this new data set, which in turn improves performance; see more info in Create a Separate Data Preparation Document.

Next

How to Use the Displayr Cloud Drive

How to Import Data from the Displayr Cloud Drive