Comparison of related software packages

There are several other R packages interacting with the ODK ecosystem, and/or OData.

Comparison of ODK related software packages (non-ODK core)

Package	ruODK	odkr	odk	odkmeta	koboloadeR	Pentaho Kettle tutorial
Elevator pitch	“ckanr for ODK Central”	“Drive ODK Briefcase through R”	“Export ODK Aggregate to SPSS”	“Export ODK Aggregate to STATA”	“Metapackage for the extended ODK ecosystem”	“What ruODK does, but as GUI”
Last commit			Nov 2017
Website
Test coverage			❌	In repo		NA
Working examples	README, 3 vignettes, pkgdown, Rmd templates	README, pkgdown	CRAN PDF	README	README, 9 vignettes, shiny apps, pkgdown	Tutorial with screenshots
Available on CRAN				NA	NA	NA
Technologies	Tidyverse R, XForms	Base R	Base R	Stata	R metapackage, XlsForms	Pentaho Kettle GUI
External dependencies	None	Java, ODK Briefcase	SPSS	Stata	Java, ODK Briefcase, wraps odkr	Pentaho Kettle, Java
Affiliation	ROpenSci	RapidSurveys	Muntashir-Al-Arefin	ODK Central developer Matt White	UNHCR	Schemetrica
Covers ODK Central OData API	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅
Covers ODK Central REST API	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Covers ODK Central bulk export	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	✅
Covers ODK Central OpenRosa API	❌ no need, gets all data through OData/REST API	✅ via ODK Briefcase	❌	❌	✅ via ODK Briefcase	✅
Data post-processing	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅
Data visualisation examples	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌

In summary:

ruODK provides a dependency-free interface to ODK Central.

koboloadeR is a metapackage containing lots of ancillary packages, with some heavy dependencies on Java and ODK Briefcase (which in turn can access ODK Central). Although built around the XlsForm standard and paradigm, koboloadeR is well worth exploring as a larger context to data wrangling in the ODK ecosystem.

Schemetrica’s tutorial illustrates data ETL from ODK Central and deserves a special mention, as it is both very recent and aimed specifically against ODK Central. The GUI paradigm of Pentaho Kettle addresses a different audience to the scripting paradigm of ruODK. It should be mentioned that Kettle’s composable data manipulation steps can be used for many other use cases apart from ODK Central.

Comparison of OData related R packages

Package	ruODK	odataR	cbsodataR	OData	OData JDBC R tutorial
Elevator pitch	“ckanr for ODK Central”	“OData client for https://opendata.cbs.nl (and similar)”	“OData client for https://www.cbs.nl”	“Minimal OData example”	“Minimal RJDBC example”
Last commit				Dec 2016	❓
Website
Test coverage		❌		❌	❌
Targets ODK Central	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Works with ODK Central	✅	❓	❓	❌	❌
Data wrangling helpers for post-processing	✅	some	some	❌	❌
Actively maintained to work against ODK Central	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Technologies	R, httr, xml2, tidyr, purrr	R, jsonlite, tidyverse	R, tidyverse	R, XML, RJSONIO	R, RJDBC, Java
External dependencies	✅ None	✅ None	✅ None	✅ None	❌ JDBC, Java
Available on CRAN		NA			NA

In summary:

ruODK is the only R package explicitly aimed at ODK Central’s OData and RESTful API, as well as providing context and helpers around specific recurring data wrangling tasks.

The value of OData lies in its self-descriptive nature, which allows tools to introspect the data structures and types. Both GUI-driven tools like MS PowerBI and ruODK use this introspection to assist users in wrangling their own data.

The script-based approach of ruODK allows to automate the data extraction, transformation, and reporting pipeline, and therefore provide reproducible reporting.